Writer, Film Director and Actress Writer, film director and actress Sam Vansteen was born in Lille, France in 1973.
After graduating from the University of Lille and West Virginia University, where she wrote her thesis on Nobel-winning novelists William Faulkner and Claude Simon, she joined French TV channel Canal J as a journalist, TV host and film director.
She then worked for the TV channel Equidia as an anchor, presenting the news live on air for two years.
Her first book, “Le Meli Melo d’Alma” (“Alma’s Mix-up”) was quickly followed by “One Tribe, Two Tribes, Three Tribes,” and “One Planet Only,” published by the French publishing house “Les Portes du monde.”
As an actress, she studied in Paris with some of France’s leading actors and coaches including Hélène Zidi at the Laboratoire de l’Acteur, Fabrice Merlo at the Voice of an Actor and Kim Massee at New Actors, New Directors. She also studied screenwriting with Guila Braoude and improvisation with Emilie Pfeiffer at Le Theatre Le Bout.
In 2010, Sam moved to San Francisco. She was coached by Shelley Mitchell at the Actor’s Center and by the filmmaker Rob Nilsson, best known for his feature film “Northern Lights,” winner of the Camera d’Or at the Cannes film festival). She starred as the lead character in Nilsson’s film “Maelstrom” which was presented at the Mill Valley Film Festival in 2012. She also starred in and co-produced Nilsson’s film “A Bridge to a Border” in 2014. She took part in several plays directed by San Francisco-based French director Frederic Patto in plays by Hanoch Levin, Denise Bonal and Pal Bekes from 2013 to 2015.
In 2011, Christophe Lambert asked her to collaborate on a new book, “La Fille de mes Rêves” (“The Girl of my Dreams”), published by Syros.
Her five years in San Francisco were busy, productive and creative. She started a film company with filmmaker Eric Chebassier, worked as an interviewer, journalist and film director for French TV channels, with credits including “Thalassa” for France 3, “Entre Ciel et Terre” for Arte and “La Renaissance de Lara Croft” for W9, wrote and directed the documentary “Les Tuniques Rouges,” (“The Red Serge”), a documentary about the Royal Canadian Mounted Police during the visit of Prince William and Kate Middleton to Canada. She was correspondent and host for Radio Canada’s morning show “Dessine-moi un Dimanche” (“(Draw me a Sunday morning”) as well as writing for “French Morning,” a French newspaper based in the US. In 2014, her second book with Christophe Lambert, “Virus 57,” was published by Syros Nathan and won the "Le Prix des Mordus du Polar de la ville de Paris” award in April 2016. She also wrote “Vivre les USA,” published in 2014 by Hakiri.
Since returning to Paris in late 2015, she has been working with different production companies as an author, host, and film director. Her book “Portraits of San Francisco” was published by Hikari in 2016. She co-wrote the French-English bilingual novel “Hidden Agenda” with Christophe Lambert, which was published by Syros in their successful “Tip Tongue” series, and wrote and directed “Les Chevaux du Volcan” (“The Horses of the Volcano”), filmed on the island of Jeju in South Korea and produced by Point du Jour, which aired in September 2016 on the international horse racing channel Equidia.
In November 2016, she opened a new company as an Editorial Consultant, working for French and American companies using her bilingual skills. In her new capacity she has worked for Saint-Gobain as editorial consultant for its new website, including texts, management and voice over; for the French banking informatics group IT-CE as editor in chief during their Convention; for Amazon Stories as a writer and a film director, and for Bayard Milan as their main reader in Paris for book submissions in both English and French.
Her work in theatre has continued, co-writing a play in English with Raquel Bitton, and performing her one-woman show, “Sam Vansteen est So French” for two years. She has also written and performed her new one-woman show, “Dans les Yeux de Zelda” (“In the Eyes of Zelda”), inspired by the life of Zelda Fitzgerald, which premiered in January 2020 under the direction of Frederic Patto, and is writing her next Young Adult novel, “Je suis venue te dire” (I came to tell you).
