Nadine Nassib Njeim Shares The Story Of The Break-Up That Changed Her Life
The Lebanese actress shared an intimate decision she regrets making in her younger years, which ultimately shaped the course of her life forever…
While love is a wonderful thing, it can sometimes drive us to make crazy or unexpected decisions which change our course of action, and Nadine Nassib Njeim is no stragner to these. In this month’s issue, the Lebanese star shares her experience with making a life-changing decision in the name of love, which (although has a silver lining now) she regretted at the time.
“I’ll tell you something,” she says with characteristic intensity. “I’ve never told this to anyone before.” We sit in closer – as journalists, a story set-up like this is music to our ears.
“When I was 17, I was going to get my certificate for med school, but one day, a man visited my parents to ask for my hand in marriage…” A plot twist. “At that time, I didn’t want to. I felt that I had bigger dreams in this world. I wanted to apply for Miss Lebanon and become a doctor and this was not in the plan,” she laughs. “My mum told him it was OK to get engaged for now, but that he couldn’t marry me before I finished university. She told him about my pageantry goals, and he said he would wait… but I knew he couldn’t hang on for 10 years for me to finish med school, so I switched to studying media instead because I loved TV.”
“That was my first regret, because I changed my dream for someone who didn’t want to wait. So we broke up. It all happened in the space of a year and we went our separate ways, but for me it was hard to go back to studying medicine, and until now I keep thinking that if he hadn’t come into my life, I would have been a doctor by now. I was very young at the time, but I learned that you should hold onto your dreams.” Finding an all- important silver lining, she adds, “But if I had, I wouldn’t have been here. I did something better.”
There’s no paralysing regret, just a few morals to the story, and perhaps a sense of that conflicted feeling when you take a right at the crossroads as opposed to a left.
Read the full story from Bazaar’s June 2021 issue here.
Editor in Chief: Olivia Phillips. Art Director: Oscar Yáñez. Fashion Director: Anna Castan. Photography: Mohamad Seif. Talent’s Stylist: Jony Matta. Hair: Wassim Steve. Make-Up: Masooma Hashim. Stylist’s Assistants: Nour Bou Ezz and Jasmina Rossi. Producers: Johana Dana and Elle Hutchinson. Producer’s Assistant: Jody Hassan. Photographer’s Assistant: Tony Abou. Set Stylist: Chloe Szukilojc.
From Harper’s Bazaar Arabia’s June 2021 Issue.
