Elham Ali

Ali grew up in Saudi Arabia and started out in front of the camera as a presenter rather than an actress, hosting a programme on Saudi television. Her move into acting came while she was living in Bahrain, where she took part in stage productions before landing television roles.

She has said little in published interviews about her family background or schooling, and she keeps most details of her private life out of the press.

Ali's first television drama role came in 2013, and the 2014 series Rayhana, in which she appeared alongside Kuwaiti actress Hayat Al-Fahad, introduced her to a wider Gulf audience. She kept working in theatre, with plays including Khamees Kamash Khasham Habash (2015) and several productions in 2022 and 2023.

Through the late 2010s and 2020s her screen work expanded. She appeared in the Saudi Netflix anthology Bashar Shorts and in films including Al Masafa Sefr (Zero Distance, 2019), Bilal the Sixth (2021) and The Cello (2023), a horror feature directed by Darren Lynn Bousman. She led the cast of the 2021 series Ekhtetaf, a role that won her the Joy Awards Best Actress prize the following year, and at a later edition she was nominated again for The Cello and the series Jareemat Qalb (Heart Crime). In 2023 she starred in the Saudi film The Prisoner, released on Amazon Prime Video, as a grieving mother opposite Khaled Saqer. More recent television includes the long-running 2024 drama Kharif Al-Qalb and the 2025 series Shari' Al-A'sha.

In 2024 Netflix chose Ali and Saqer, who married in May 2019, to front Love Is Blind, Habibi. The nine-episode first season, filmed in Lebanon, Dubai and Abu Dhabi, followed 20 Arab singles, with a reunion special released on 1 November 2024. The series was later nominated for an International Emmy in the non-scripted entertainment category, the first spin-off of the franchise to earn that recognition.