Nilam Michaela Farooq was born in Berlin on September 26, 1989, to a Polish mother and a Pakistani father. She gained her first acting experience at the age of 14, during her high school years, as an extra. From 2006, she took private acting lessons and played her first, mostly smaller guest roles in series such as "Alle lieben Jimmy" (2007) and "Bella Block" (2009); she also appeared in several short films, such as Nico Sommer's "Stiller Frühling" (2008).

From October 2010 to the end of 2017, Farooq hosted her own very successful YouTube channel, initially titled "daaruum," renamed "Nilam" in 2016. In the form of a video blog, she published posts there on autobiographical topics, travel and lifestyle. In 2011, Farooq won Google's "Next Up" young talent competition, and in 2013 she was awarded the PlayAward for Beauty, Lifestyle, Fashion at Videoday. In the meantime, her channel was among the German-language YouTube channels with the most subscribers. In 2013, she said in an interview, "I can actually make a living from YouTube. And that feels good."

Nevertheless, she continued to pursue her acting career. From 2013 to 2019, she was a regular on the crime series "SOKO Leipzig", appearing in over 90 episodes of the series. She played a leading role in Peter Gersina's "Die Briefe meiner Mutter" (2014, TV), as the daughter of a single mother and political journalist (Christine Neubauer) who traces the fate of her missing father in Chile. In the TV movie "Roomservice" (2015) of the popular "Tatort" creime series, she was the sister of a rape victim seeking revenge, and in the docudrama "Die Opfer - Vergesst mich nicht" (2016), the daughter of an NSU murder victim.

Nilam Farooq made her debut on the big screen with a small role as a policewoman in "Allein gegen die Zeit - Der Film" ("Time Heroes", 2016). In "Mein Blind Date mit dem Leben" ("My Blind Date With Life", 2016) she was the sister of the main character, in the horror film "Heilstätten" ("Haunted Hospital") a YouTuber who gets into mortal danger during a challenge. She played smaller roles in the comedies "Verpiss dich, Schneewittchen" (2018) and "Sweethearts" (2019). Farooq had other leading roles in the comedy "Rate Your Date" (2019), as the co-developer of a novel dating app, and in Sönke Wortmann's "Contra" (2020), as a law student whose professor harbors racist animosity toward her and has to coach her as a disciplinary measure. She won the Bavarian Film Award for this role in 2021. Also under Wortmann's direction, she was part of the ensemble of the comedy "Eingeschlossene Gesellschaft" ("Locked-In Society", 2022), about the everyday madness in the teachers' lounge of a high school. In Doris Dörrie's "Freibad" ("The Pool", 2022) about the microcosm of a public pool exclusively for women, she played another lead role.

In 2022 she was honored again for her role in "Contra": Farooq was awarded the Ernst Lubitsch Prize alongside her co-star Christoph Maria Herbst. Staying true to the comedy genre, she continued with important roles in "Beule" (2022), "Manta Manta - Zwoter Teil" (2023) and "Trauzeugen" (2023). She also participated as a candidate in the 4th season of the quiz show  "Wer stiehlt mir die Show?" in August/September 2022 and then hosted the show's season finale.

At the end of 2023, Farooq could be seen on the big screen as a cool startup founder in the tragicomic road movie "791 km". Shortly after, she took on another lead role in the psycho-thriller "Home Sweet Home - Wo das Böse wohnt" ("Home Sweet Home - Where the Evil Lives"), portraying a heavily pregnant woman who is confronted with eerie events in her husband's childhood home.