Joy Rieger

Joy Rieger (; born 3 March 1994) is an Israeli actress. She is a winner of the Tribeca Film Festival Award for Best Actress in international film, and of the Israeli Television Academy Award.

Early life Rieger was born in Herzliya to parents who immigrated from Belgium. Her father is Ilan Steve Rieger, and her mother is Evelyn Scheiner-Rieger.

In her youth, she studied at the Thelma Yellin High School for the Arts, majoring in theater, from which she graduated in 2012.

Career Rieger started her acting career as a child in several children plays (the musicals The Jungle Book and The Sound of Music) and in children's roles is TV and films.

From 2012 to 2016, she played a central role for three seasons in the Israeli Nickelodeon youth series The Greenhouse, where she played Dina Navon, a young delinquent who arrives at a high school for leadership.

In 2016 She also played a leading role in Avi Nesher's film Past Life, alongside Nelly Tagar, where the two play a pair of careerist sisters who try to uncover a terrible secret related to their father and the Holocaust.

In December of that year, she played a leading role in the Yes youth series Oboy, in which she played a girl named Alma who pretends to be a man named Ben and tries to get accepted into a boy band to cover her mother's debts. This role won her the Israeli Television Academy Award for best actress in a youth series on 2017.

In 2017 she also played the lead role in the French-Israeli film Virgins. For this role, she won the Best Actress in a Foreign Language Film Award at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2018. The award was presented to her by actor Ray Liotta.

In 2018 she played the lead role in the film The Other Story by Avi Nesher.

In 2019 she played in the TV miniseries Valley of Tears about Yom Kippur War, that was later licensed by HBO Max.

In 2020 she participated in Avi Nesher's film Image of Victory, in the role of Mira Ben-Ari.

In 2021 she played in the Cypriot-Israeli film Patchwork.

In 2023 she played in the French horror film Killer Influence, which won her the best actress award in Festival International du Film Fantastique de Menton.

In 2024 she won honorable mention in Tel Aviv International LGBTQ+ Film Festival for the short film I'm not Okay which she wrote, directed and had the main role in, playing a fictional version of herself.

From December 2025, she will star alongside Tomer Machloof in Noam Shmuel's production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle by Bertold Brecht at the Habima Theater.

Personal life In 2017, she came out of the closet and revealed her relationship with actress Moran Rosenblatt. In 2018, they separated after 4 years of being together.

In 2020, she had a relationship with actress Carmel Bean. The two separated after about three years.

Although she has had relationships with men in the past, since coming out, Rieger identifies as a lesbian, and speaks openly about her sexual orientation.

As of 2023, she lives in Tel Aviv with her partner, chef Shirel Berger.

Filmography

Films

Television

Theatre

Awards