Yasmina Reza

Yasmina Reza was born on May 1, 1959, in Paris, France. Her father, a Jewish Iranian engineer, was imprisoned in the Drancy internment camp under the Vichy regime, the Nazi-controlled puppet government that controlled much of southern France from 1940 to 1944. He survived by claiming to be Muslim. Her mother, a Jewish Hungarian violinist, immigrated to France as a young woman. Yasmina Reza trained as an actor at the Jacques Lecoq International School of Theater in Paris. After acting in classic and contemporary French plays, Reza won a Molière Award (a prestigious French drama prize) for her first published work as a playwright, Conversations after a Burial (1987). Her third play, ‘Art’ (1994), became a breakout hit. It won not only another Molière Award but also—after its translation into English by Christopher Hampton—a Laurence Olivier Award, a New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award, and a Tony Award. Reza has written eight plays, ten book-length works of fiction or nonfiction, and four screenplays, including the script for the English-language film Carnage (2011), an adaptation of Reza’s own play The God of Carnage (2006). She has two children with the film director and writer Didier Martiny.