Calamawy was born in Bahrain[2] on October 28, 1986,[2][5][10] to an Egyptian father who worked as a banker[2] and a Palestinian-Jordanian mother.[2][5] She has an older brother.[11] Raised mostly in Bahrain, she also spent six years living between Doha, Qatar, and Houston, Texas, before she was twelve years old.[2][7][5] Calamawy speaks English and Arabic.[2]
She was inspired to become an actress after watching the 1992 film Death Becomes Her when she was a child.[5][12]
Calamawy completed high school in Bahrain,[2] and at 17 she moved to Boston, Massachusetts, to study industrial design,[13] because her father wanted her to.[2] She then lived in Dubai for five years before moving back to the United States to pursue an acting career.[14]
Calamawy started her career acting in short films and used to be credited with her full name, May El Calamawy.[2][1] She later changed it to May Calamawy.[15] After attending college, she participated in the New York Arab American Comedy Festival.[2]
In 2006, she made her feature film debut in Thursday, directed by Thadd Williams.[16] From 2009 to 2014, she was dividing her time between Dubai and Abu Dhabi, acting in shorts and a TV pilot.[2]
In May 2023,[24] Calamawy joined the cast of Ridley Scott's Gladiator II and it was originally announced that she would play an important character,[25] but her scenes were cut and she only appeared in an uncredited non-speaking background role as a companion of Denzel Washington's character in a few scenes.[26][27]
Upcoming projects
In October 2022, Calamawy joined the cast of Duke Johnson's upcoming thriller, The Actor,[28][29] in which she plays five different characters.[30]
Personal life
Calamawy was diagnosed with the autoimmune disease alopecia areata at the age of 22.[7] Her alopecia was incorporated into the storyline of her character Dena Hassan in Ramy during the show's second season.[7][11]
Since 2015, Calamawy has resided in the United States.[11][5]
^Although Calamawy was born in Bahrain, she does not hold Bahraini citizenship. Bahrain's nationality law only grants citizenship to people born in Bahrain to a Bahrain-born father who is a permanent resident,[4] while Calamawy's father is Egyptian and her mother is Palestinian-Jordanian. Calamawy identifies herself as Egyptian-Palestinian. All the reliable sources available refer to her as being only Egyptian-Palestinian, and as of December 2024, there is no evidence that she holds any other citizenship.[1][5][6][7][8][9]
^Azar, Nicolas (December 15, 2022). ""كانت رحلتي بأكملها عبارة عن بحث مستمر واكتشاف لهويّتي": May Calamawy" [May Calamawy: "My entire journey has been a constant search and discovery of my identity"]. Marie Claire Arabia (in Arabic). Retrieved September 20, 2024. I'm about to head to Budapest for a month with an amazing cast to work on a movie called The Actor directed by the talented Duke Johnson. I'm so excited about this, I couldn't have wished for a better end to the year!
