Deva Cassel is carving out a path on her own terms, moving between fashion and film and embracing the legacy she inherited without letting it define her. At 22, she is still discovering who she wants to become.

“Idon’t want to be understood as someone’s daughter or someone’s successor. I want to be understood as a person who is still becoming.” No other sentence can perhaps capture 22-year-old Deva Cassel more precisely.

She entered fashion six years ago, stepping into an adult world while still working out who she herself was. Today, Cassel is a familiar presence in fashion and a friend of Cartier, while acting has opened up a different kind of ambition.

What feels most apparent now is a growing confidence in her own judgement. For someone who has spent much of her life being looked at, perhaps the more interesting question is no longer how the world sees her, but what she is beginning to see for herself.

“I think the biggest change is that I’ve become more comfortable not having all the answers,” Cassel shares. “At 15, I was thrown into a very adult world and learned to adapt before I really understood myself. Now, at 22, I feel more conscious of who I am and who I’m becoming.”

“I’m still discovering so much, which is what I find most exciting about being in my twenties,” she continues. “One experience, person, or role can completely shift your perspective. I’m learning not to fear change, and to let myself evolve without letting certain experiences, faults, as well as accomplishments define me too quickly.”

That openness to change has become part of the way she approaches her career. There is ambition, certainly, but little interest in rushing towards a predetermined version of success.

Cassel would rather take things project by project, following what challenges or interests her. Her appearance on MADAME Arabia’s September cover also carries a quiet family connection. Monica Bellucci was our September cover star a year ago. Now her daughter finds herself on the same pages, at a very different point in her career. The connection feels particularly relevant given how openly Deva Cassel speaks about family, comparison, and finding a direction that is distinctly her own.

Acting is increasingly where Cassel is testing that independence – and her recent roles could hardly be further apart. Angelica in The Leopard introduced her to a particular expression of power and femininity. She spent months in Morocco playing the Virgin and in The Phantom of the Opera, playing a ballet dancer demanded discipline of a different sort.

“What I love about acting is that every woman I play leaves something behind in me. Angelica in The Leopard taught me a lot about power and femininity, [the Virgin] Mary taught me about faith, surrender, and an entirely different kind of strength, and playing a ballet dancer in The Phantom of the Opera taught me about discipline and the relationship between the body and emotion,” the actress shares. “They’re all so different from me, and yet somehow, I always find a part of myself in them. I think that’s what acting has given me – permission to explore parts of myself that I might never have met otherwise.”

It’s clear that the worlds of acting and fashion imparted different educations. “Modelling taught me a lot about expression through the body and about being comfortable being observed, but acting gave me a voice,” Cassel notes. “It allows me to live inside a feeling rather than simply communicate an image. I can disappear into someone else and, strangely, discover more of myself in the process.”

Acting, however, was not an immediate choice – in fact, its very obviousness made Cassel resist it at first. “For a long time, I think I confused ambition with proving something. Because acting was always the path people imagined for me, I almost felt like choosing it would mean choosing the life that had already been written for me. So, I resisted it,” she reveals candidly. “Now that I’ve chosen it for myself, ambition feels much more intimate. I don’t want to be the most famous or the most successful person in the room. I want to become undeniable to myself, to know that I’m doing work that scares me, challenges me and makes me grow.”

“As an actress,” she emphasises, “I want to be fearless and curious. I want to work with people who make me see things differently, and I want to be able to transform completely without losing the truth of who I am.”

ON HER OWN TERMS

Away from a set or shoot, Cassel’s style is straightforward, driven more by feeling than by fashion rules. “I think my personal style is actually quite simple when nobody is dressing me,” she says. “I like things that feel lived in – a great pair of jeans, a beautiful jacket, something slightly masculine mixed with something very feminine.”

“I’m much more interested in how something feels on me than whether it’s technically ‘fashion’. I love designers who have a strong point of view, but I don’t really have rules anymore...” she adds. “Maybe my only rule is that I have to feel like myself in what I’m wearing. After spending so many years having other people create an image of me, I think I’ve become very protective of my own instinct. Some days that means being very dressed, and some days it means putting on an oversized button-up and jorts, and leaving the house.”

Working with her image has taught Cassel to draw a distinction between appearance and perception. “I think you have to learn to separate your face from your identity when it becomes part of your work. When you’re constantly looking at yourself in mirrors, on screens, in photographs, it can become very easy to forget that your face is just one small part of who you are,” she notes.

Not surprisingly, Cassel also has an equally simple, down-to- earth self-care regimen. “When I’m just me, my beauty routine is actually very uncomplicated,” she explains. “I like taking care of my skin, keeping it hydrated, and not doing too much. There’s something untouchable about a shower, clean skin, moisturiser, and going to bed without having to look ‘finished’. My biggest
beauty secret is probably sleep, and remembering that sometimes the best thing you can put on your face is absolutely nothing.”

The worlds of fashion and cinema aren’t known for their slow, static nature, which is where Cassel relies on some fallbacks to ground herself. “Movement is probably the thing I rely on most.

When life gets chaotic, I feel better when I move my body, whether that’s training, dancing, walking for hours in a new city, meditation, anything that gets me out of my head and back into my body,” she says. “On a bad day, I try not to fight it too much.

I’ll disappear for a little while, put my phone away, write, listen to music, and give myself permission to have a bad day without turning it into a bad life. And the small indulgence that can fix almost anything is food. A really good meal, ideally somewhere
quiet like home or in one of my favourite restaurants, with people I love, and no reason to rush. I think pleasure is a very underrated form of wellness.”

THE THINGS WE KEEP

Jewellery carries a different emotional weight for Cassel. Its value is less about the object than the people, places, and moments it can hold. “I think the most meaningful pieces are the ones that carry a person or memory with them. I have a few pieces given to me by my family that I’ve kept close – what makes them special really isn’t the jewellery itself, but the sentiment attached to it,” she says.

“I’ve always had a special connection to rings, too,” she adds. “I collect one from every place that holds meaning for me, so each becomes a reminder of a journey or moment in my life. I love how jewellery can become a physical memory, transporting you back to the place or time it represents. That’s why I’m more sentimental about jewellery than fashion. Clothes can tell you who you were that season; jewellery can stay with you through entire versions of yourself.”

Her relationship with Cartier finds an easy parallel here. Cassel associates the Panthère, one of the Maison’s enduring signatures, with instinct, beauty, strength, and unpredictability. “Out of those, I think instinct is probably the quality I recognise most in myself. I’ve always had a very strong intuition about what feels right to me, even when I couldn’t necessarily explain why,” she
notes. “I’m learning to trust that feeling more and more, rather than always looking for validation outside of myself.”

“Strength is something I’m still learning. Not necessarily strength in the obvious sense, but the quieter kind – knowing when to hold on, when to let go, and being comfortable with the fact that you can be vulnerable and still be strong,” Cassel says.

“And unpredictability... I hope I never lose that. I don’t want to know exactly who I’m going to be in ten years. I think there’s something beautiful about leaving space to the unknown.”

FAMILY AND IDENTITY

Working in the same world as her parents has given Cassel a perspective on their lives that childhood could not. “I think working in the same world has made me understand my parents in a completely different way,” she explains. “When you’re a child, your parents are simply your parents. You don’t necessarily have the tools nor the experience to see the discipline, the sacrifices, the pressure or the amount of courage it takes to build something that lasts, all while raising children.”

“Now that I’m experiencing parts of that world myself, I understand much more about what they had to give of themselves to become who they are,” she adds. “I also understand that what looks effortless from the outside usually isn’t.”

The actress and model also explains how she learned different things from each of her parents – film veterans Monical Bellucci and Vincent Cassel. “From my mother, I’ve learned strength and independence. She taught me that you can be sensitive and still be incredibly strong, and that you should never compromise who you are to fit into someone else’s idea of you,” she says. “From my father, I’ve learned curiosity and perseverance. He taught me to keep moving, to stay open, and to never stop wanting to learn.

But perhaps the most important thing they both gave me is the freedom to become my own person. I think that’s the greatest gift a parent can give you – not a map, but the confidence to draw your own.”

Bellucci’s significance to generations of women, including many in the Arab world, is something Deva Cassel has come to understand differently with time. At home, she has always simply been Cassel’s mother. “I’ve had the privilege of growing up with one of the most humble, kind, and passionate women I know,” she says. “To me, she has always simply been my mother, so I’ve
seen the person behind the public image, at home and in ordinary moments.”

“As I’ve grown older and entered these industries myself, I’ve begun to understand what she represents to so many women,” she adds. “Hearing them speak about her with affection and admiration is incredibly moving, not only about her talent but also, simply who she is. The qualities people admire from afar, her strength, warmth, generosity and authenticity, are the same ones I’ve always known. It has made me realise that she belongs to a much larger story than our family, and I feel privileged to have seen where that impact comes from.”

The inevitable comparisons that once accompanied Cassel have become easier to hold alongside her own ambitions. “I think my
relationship with that legacy has changed simply because my relationship with myself has changed. When I was younger, I was
much more conscious of the comparison,” she accepts. “I think I felt a need to prove that I was not simply continuing someone else’s story. Now I see it differently. I’m incredibly proud of where I come from, and I don’t feel the need to run away from it in order to become my own person.”

Speaking of Bellucci, she says, “Her legacy is a part of my history, but it doesn’t have to be the definition of my future. I hope people eventually discover Deva beyond the names they associate with me. I want them to see my curiosity, my sensitivity, my sense of humour, my imperfections, and hopefully my work. I don’t want to be understood as someone’s daughter or someone’s successor. I want to be understood as a person who is still becoming.”

Watching her younger sister, Léonie, enter modelling has also placed Deva Cassel on the other side of an experience she knows
well. “I want her to make mistakes, to discover what she likes and what she doesn’t, to say no, to change her mind, and to find her
own relationship with the industry,” she shares. “More than anything, I want her to know that modelling is something she does, not something she is. The most important thing is that she gets to remain Léonie when the camera is off.”

PRIVATE TERRITORY

That distinction between the person and the public image extends to Cassel’s own life. She knows that visibility is part of her work, but not everything needs to belong to an audience. “I think the line is wherever I stop feeling like a person and start feeling like a product. I’m very conscious that my image is part of my work, and I’m happy to share certain parts of myself, butthere are things that I want to keep completely untouched by the public eye,” she says. “My relationships, my family, the moments when I’m vulnerable, and the parts of my life that have no purpose other than being lived, those are not content to me. I think we sometimes forget that not everything meaningful needs to be documented.”

When so much of a public life is experienced through images, the question of what is real becomes increasingly personal, particularly at a time when an image can exist without the moment behind it ever having happened. For Cassel, that is where AI raises a more interesting question about authenticity.

“With AI, I think authenticity becomes even more about intention. An image can look completely real and still feel empty,” the model notes. “For me, authenticity is knowing that there is a human experience behind what you’re seeing – a feeling, a choice, a mistake, something spontaneous that actually happened. I’d rather be imperfect and real than perfectly reproduced.”

Months spent in Morocco portraying the Virgin Mary (for the upcoming Zero A. D.: The Birth of Christ) brought the value of a private inner life into sharper focus. Away for an extended period and immersed in the role, Cassel found herself drawn towards silence and serenity.

“I think the bigger my world becomes, the more I feel the need for a very small private one of my own. Morocco was an important moment for that. Being away for so long and having so much time dedicated to myself and my craft made me realise how much I need silence,” she says. “Writing and meditation became ways of coming back to myself when everything around me was moving very quickly. I’m learning that protecting your peace isn’t selfish. It’s actually what allows you to be fully present for the people and the work that matter to you. I think privacy, especially today, is one of the most effective forms of freedom.”

THE LONG VIEW

When Cassel imagines herself decades from now, it is not career milestones that come first. “I hope I recognise her immediately. I hope I look at that 21-year-old girl and remember how much she wanted to experience everything, how curious she was, and how much she still had to learn. I don’t want to be exactly the same person at 40,” she says. “I hope I’m wiser without becoming cynical, calmer without losing the fire, and more secure without becoming closed off. I hope I’ve learned to say no without guilt, love without fear, and continued to choose a life that feels full rather than merely impressive. Most of all, I hope I haven’t outgrown her hunger. And at 21, 40, or 70, I just want to be happy.”

That hunger, for now, extends to the work ahead, particularly projects she cannot yet quite picture herself doing. “I’m excited by projects that scare me a little. I don’t want to repeat myself, and I think I’m at a point where I’m much more interested in transformation than in playing it safe,” she says. “There are so many different worlds I’d love to explore – something physically demanding, something psychologically darker, or even something where I can work more creatively behind the camera.”

In conclusion, she says, “I’m generally very drawn to working with filmmakers and artists who have a very specific universe of their own. I don’t necessarily have one dream role written down. I think I’m more interested in following the feeling of a project and seeing where it takes me. The things that excite me most are usually the things I can’t quite imagine myself doing yet.”