Mehdi Nebbou was born in Bayonne, France, to a German mother and an Algerian father.
He started his career by appearing in the film My Sweet Home (2001), directed by Filippos Tsitos.
In 2004, the director Samir Nasr offered him the leading role in the film Présumé coupable (2004), which won the Golden Gate Award for best film at the San Francisco Film Festival. 2005 was a turning point in Nebbou's career thanks to the film Schläfer (2005) by German film director Benjamin Heisenberg. The film received excellent reviews and was selected for the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.
In 2006 he played Ali Hassan Salameh in the Steven Spielberg blockbuster film Munich (2005).
In 2007 for his performance in Teresas Zimmer (2006), directed by German film director Constanze Knoche, he won the award for best actor First Steps Awards.
In 2007 he worked in Ca$h (2008) with Jean Dujardin, Jean Reno and Valeria Golino.
In 2008 Nebbou worked in the Ridley Scott film Mensonges d'état (2008) with Leonardo DiCaprio. There he played Nizar, an Iraqi linguistics doctorate turned Al-Qaeda operative who approaches CIA to defect after being enlisted by his jihadist superiors for suicide bombing. In addition, he played in several French TV series and films, among them as a disabled ex-middleweight boxing world champion in Douce France (2009) for which he won the award for best actor at 2009 at the Rochelle TV Festival. He also played Mustafa Larbi, a sadistic and unpredictable drug dealer in Season 2 of Engrenages (2005), the successful Canal+ TV series.
In 2010 he played Bruno in the Salvatore Allocca Italian romantic comedy Come trovare nel modo giusto l'uomo sbagliato (2011) and in 2011 Amin in the French action film Forces spéciales (2011) with Diane Krüger.
In 2012, he acted in an Indian film English Vinglish (2012) with Sridevi, directed by Gauri Shinde.
In 2015, he is in Homeland (2011) season 5.
He is fluent in French, German, English and Italian.
