When Deba Hekmat introduces herself to strangers, she struggles for a specific career title. A fashion figure and activist who partakes in documentaries and stars in movies, the 23-year-old multihyphenate is able to sum herself up in other ways. “I was born in Kurdistan but London definitely raised me,” she says. “I’ll be honest: I’m still trying to figure out what my job is.”
A model since the age of 16, Hekmat is speaking to me a few days after she, mic in hand, conducted red carpet interviews at the Brit Awards. However, the topic of our conversation is her acting career. Introduced to cinemagoers as Maria’s friend Laraib in Luna Carmoon’s delightfully messed-up movie Hoard, Hekmat’s second onscreen role is as the lead of Last Swim, a coming-of-age drama from Sasha Nathwani about four teens celebrating their A-Level results by partying around London.
As Ziba, an 18-year-old astrophysics afficionado with an uncertain trajectory, Hekmat is evidently a natural big-screen presence who injects each scene with her own spark and charisma. When she’s addressing her mother in Farsi or cycling around Hampstead while gossiping about boys, Ziba appears to be a go-getter careening towards a bright future. Yet Ziba sells her laptop for cash and is evidently hiding a secret that ensures Last Swim is more than a mere hang-out movie.
You wouldn’t guess, then, that Hekmat, who was only in Hoard for a few scenes, has zero acting training. Then again, you may watch Last Swim and assume that, in the best way possible, its young ensemble – the others, all experienced, are played by Lydia Fleming, Solly McLeod, Denzel Baidoo and Jay Lycurgo – are first-time performers. After all, Nathwani, who co-wrote the script with Helen Simmons (a producer on Hoard), has referred to Last Swim as a London version of the Harmony Korine-written Kids.
“I love that comparison, too,” says Hekmat. “Sasha would ask us which lines felt truer to the characters. If you’re going to make a film about young people, we should have input into how we speak.” Any examples? “There was a day we couldn’t agree on if we should say ‘dumb bitch’ or ‘dumb cow’. I was like, ‘I don’t know if anyone my age would call their best mate a ‘dumb cow’.” She adds, “Because Hoard was my first film, I didn’t feel comfortable enough to improvise on it. When I look back on it, I definitely could have been a bit crazier in places.”
Hekmat acknowledges her path to movies is unusual. She’s barely auditioned, she didn’t do TV or theatre, and she doesn’t have family connections. On Hoard, the casting director privately messaged Hekmat on Instagram with a request to audition. “Maybe she’d seen a commercial I did, but I think it was my Instagram profile,” says Hekmat. “I thought I bottled it. I left the audition crying my eyes out at the side of Hackney canal. But then I got the gig.”
Not to sound big-headed, like I don’t want to work, but I really believe that if you want to succeed in this industry – so much of it is nepotism, just like in modelling – what’s helped me is to do it my way. I always tell everyone I’m doing it my way
For Last Swim, Simmons had already collaborated with Hekmat on Hoard, while Nathwani had directed her on a music video in 2020. “I haven’t had to audition 10,000 times to get one role like other actors,” says Hekmat. “Sasha reached out to me directly.” Wasn’t it daunting to be suddenly leading a full-length feature, appearing in almost every scene? “Not to sound big-headed, like I don’t want to work, but I really believe that if you want to succeed in this industry – so much of it is nepotism, just like in modelling – what’s helped me is to do it my way. I always tell everyone I’m doing it my way.”
After moving to London from Kurdistan at the age of four, Hekmat then lived in Cardiff as a teen before returning to London. “I was 16, in college, living with my dad. I didn’t really enjoy that. We were kind of going through it, me and him. And then I found Anti-Agency on Instagram.” She sent photos of herself, visited their office a few days later, and signed a modelling contract the following week. “I had so much confidence at 16 compared to now. If you told me today to send photos of myself to an agency? No way.” Where did the confidence come from? “I didn’t enjoy school. I was like, ‘I can’t continue this.’”
In her early modelling days, Hekmat was an activist who campaigned to normalise body hair on women. Aged 20, she did a podcast episode for BBC Sounds titled “Carefree body hair with Deba Hekmat” about how her “body hair is for showing, not for shaving”. Now 23, Hekmat refers to her younger self as “having a lot more balls”, whereas her older self doesn’t feel an urge to share every opinion with the world.
“In school, I was being called Hagrid and Chewbacca. Boys threw bits of paper into my hair every day, and said things about my arm hair. My friendship group was referred to as the Tree Family because there was one girl that was bigger, and the rest of us were borderline anorexic. I love my family, but the way they viewed women really messed with my perception of beauty. It was only when I started modelling and was celebrated for being me that I realised, actually, there’s nothing wrong me. There’s nothing wrong with girls who feel too this or too that. Modelling gave me the confidence to speak up about things.”
Hekmat admits she didn’t grow up dreaming of Hollywood. Still, at the age of five, her birthday wish was for one gift: to perform in front of her parents before going to school. When asked for her dream directors, she names Dev Patel (“he told me, ‘I watched Hoard, and you were sick in it’ – I almost cried”) and a second film with Carmoon. “Luna sees that there’s value in scattiness, in unpolished talent, in the working class. We could do the whole race politics thing, but I’ve got more in common with Luna, a white working-class woman, than I do with, let’s say, the richer Black and Brown people I now have access to.”
In school, I was being called Hagrid and Chewbacca. Boys threw bits of paper into my hair every day, and said things about my arm hair
Aware that she’s increasingly on people’s radar, Hekmat is starting to audition more, and acknowledges that she’s overdue in hiring an agent. Hoard and Last Swim indicate that the actor has range, and she’s keen to demonstrate her talents further – as long as the industry will allow it. “The roles they give non-white women, we don’t get the liberty and pleasure of just acting for the sake of acting. A lot of the time, our roles are manufactured for a specific storyline. I’m a working-class immigrant from Kurdistan, a country that doesn’t have any borders, and the fact I’m doing this job is more than enough. But we owe it to our communities to take it one step ahead.”
She continues, “Obviously I’m not saying no to ethnic roles, but I want to be able to audition for a role that some next white woman could get. Because why not? I’m as British as the next white woman that’s born and bred in Surrey.”
Last Swim is out in UK cinemas on April 4