Yousef Abu-Taleb

Yousef Abu-Taleb
Screen capture of Yousef Abu-Taleb as Danielbeast in lonelygirl15
Born	Arlington County, Virginia, U.S.
Occupation	Actor/Producer
Years active	2006–present

Yousef (Ang: Joseph) Abu-Taleb (Arabic: يوسف أبو طالب‎‎) is an American actor and producer of Arab, English, and American heritage. He was born in Arlington and raised in Virginia before moving to Los Angeles, California.

He is perhaps best known for co-starring in the role of Daniel (Danielbeast), the longest-running character in the lonelygirl15 web drama, alongside Jessica Lee Rose. Since the show's finale, he has ventured into producing, working on both feature films and other internet shows, most notably Poor Paul. He is currently in pre-production on his latest feature film "Look at me" which is a romantic drama.

Yousef Abu-Taleb was taking classes at the Blue Ridge Community College in Virginia in early 2005, when he decided to head to Los Angeles with $2,500 in his pocket to pursue his dream of becoming a movie star, despite the fact that he had no formal acting training at the time.

Abu-Taleb became a member of the Screen Actors Guild and signed with Alliance Entertainment. He landed an extra role in the film Dorm Daze 2, but was eventually cut from the film. He also landed an unpaid role in the independent film Stray, in which his character was beaten to death.

While looking for acting jobs in 2006, Abu-Taleb found a Craigslist posting for an independent film codenamed Children of Anchor Cove, which later turned out to be the lonelygirl15 project. Although he was older than the character of Daniel, who was written to be 15-16, he won the role and the character was rewritten to be 18.