Tyler De Nawi

Early life

Tyler De Nawi was born in Sydney, Australia, to Ahmed DeNawi and Zena Kalaoun, both Arabic teachers that migrated to Sydney from Lebanon in the 1970s during the civil war. Born into a conservative household, he was raised in Riverwood.

De Nawi attended many different schools, starting with Hanans Road Public School, Sir Joseph Banks High School, James Busby High School, Cecil Hills High School, and finally graduating at Punchbowl Boys High School. He said moving around made him friends with everybody but never stuck to a circle, so he would do his own thing. He loved martial arts and movement so he took to Capoeira where he has trained in for over 10 years. With his agility and skills in acrobatics and gymnastics he was hired by dance companies performing live as an acrobat, percussionist began to learn dance.

He also then began practicing and teaching Parkour in communities in Western-Sydney. During adulthood he continued to try different fields of work, he is a qualified carpenter, builder. "Nobody told me I could become an actor. As a child, I used to think films were a portal into another dimension." Soon as he discovered that acting was a craft that could be learned and pursued as a career, he took lessons and worked until he could get professional work as an actor.

De Nawi and Here Come The Habibs became a focus of debate around the 2016 Australian Logie Awards when one of the winners Waleed Aly dedicated his win to an actor who had been forced to change his given name, Moustafa, to get work on Australian television. It shortly came to light this actor was De Nawi; he then penned an essay for The Age describing the difficulties he had landing auditions until he changed his first name, pointing to the "irony in the fact that after I changed my name to Tyler I landed roles as Karim Ahmed (Syrian-Australian) in The Principal and Elias Habib (Lebanese-Australian) in Here Come the Habibs. Especially since my own heritage includes both Lebanese and Syrian ancestry."