Shohreh Aghdashloo

At 72 years old, Shohreh Aghdashloo has this physical status:

Shohreh Aghdashloo (born Shohreh Vaziri-Tabar, May 11, 1952) is an Iranian-American actress.

Following numerous starring performances on stage, Abbas Kiarostami's first major film role was in The Report (Gozaresh) (1977) directed by Abbas Kiarostami, which received the Critics Award at the Moscow Film Festival.

Shatranje Bad (Chess of the Wind), directed by Mohammad Reza Aslani, was her next film and was shown at various film festivals.

Both films were outlawed in her home country, but Aghdashloo's 1978 debut in Sooteh Delan (Broken-Hearted), directed by Ali Hatami, establishing her as one Iran's top actresses. Aghdashloo, who began a stage and film career in Iran, migrated to England after the Iranian Revolution in 1979, becoming a resident of the United States.

She appeared in House of Sand and Fog (2003), earning her numerous film critics' awards and a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress after many years of small roles on television and film.

She has continued to appear in film and television, including a starring role as Chrisjen Avasarala on The Expanse (2015-present), and she was given the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie for her role in the HBO original miniseries House of Saddam (2008).

The Alley of Love and Yellow Jasmines, she wrote in 2013, became her autobiography.

Early life

Aghdashloo was born in Tehran, the daughter of Effie (née alSadat) and Anushiravan Vazhdat. Shahram, Shahriar, and Shahrokh are three brothers. Her stage name comes from her first husband, painter Aydin Aghdashloo's name. She began attending theatre workshops after her family's marriage in 1972, when she was 19 and he was 31 years old. She had always wanted to be an actress and within a short time, she was cast in Iranian theatre and film. When she left Iran for England at the start of the Iranian Revolution, they did not have children and were divorced in 1979.

Aghdashloo arrived in England and obtained a bachelor's degree in international relations at Brunel University due to her political interest after having to leave her home country. She was already familiar with England as her parents had taken her to London as a child. She then continued to pursue her acting career, which took her to Los Angeles. Houshang Touzie, an actor/playwright, married Aghdashloo in 1987. Tara Touzie, the family's daughter, was born in 1989. She has appeared in a number of Touzie's productions, many in the Iranian diaspora. Despite being born to a Muslim family, she has denied that she is not practicing.

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Career

Aghdashloo first appeared in a dramatic version of the book The Narrow Road to the Deep North (1973). Aghdashloo made her American debut in 1989 as a co-star in Guests of Hotel Astoria. In a guest appearance in a two-hour episode of the NBC television series Matlock's "Nowhere to Turn: A Matlock Mystery Movie," she made her television debut on September 25, 1990. Aghdashloo appeared on screen sporadically, including in Kamshad Kooshan's widely circulated Surviving Paradise (2000), written and directed by Kamshad Kooshan.

Aghdashloo was in 2001 opposite Ben Kingsley and Jennifer Connelly in director Vadim Perelman's House of Sand and Fog, for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Aghdashloo played Dina Araz, a jihadist undercover in Los Angeles as a well-to-do housewife and mother after this introduction. Aghdashloo said that although she had previously opposed reinforcing the image of Muslims as terrorists, the flexibility and complexity of the role persuaded her to accept it. Hamid Naficy, an Iranian film scholar, slammed Aghdashloo's appearance in "the sensationalist film The Stoning of Soraya M" as "discredit[ing] her promise not to appear in films that stereotype Middle Easterners, including Iranians." Aghdashloo made guest appearances on several well-known television shows, including Will & Grace, ER, and Grey's Anatomy, in the months that followed. She has appeared in films including X-Men: Dr. Kavita Rao, The Lake House, The Nativity Story as Elizabeth, and The Traveling Pants 2.

Aghdashloo performed as a principal judge at the second annual Noor Iranian Film Festival in Los Angeles in 2008, when she also appeared in the film The Stoning of Soraya M., marking her first leading role in a feature-length American film. In the same year, she also appeared in the HBO original miniseries House of Saddam, where she received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie. On September 12, 2009, Aghdashloo, author Dr. Azar Nafisi, and Dr. Dwight Bashir, Associate Director for International Religious Freedom, expressed their dissatisfaction with human rights in Iran and the persecution of Bahár Jews in Iran. Aghdashloo's talk in particular was broadcast on YouTube. During its first annual gala on October 9, 2010, the Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans named Aghdashloo their Career Achievement Award.

Agdashloo continues to act in films ranging from The Odd Life of Timothy Green, Septembers of Shiraz, and Star Trek Beyond; as well as television, guest stars on series such as House, M.D., The Simpsons, and NCIS. She appeared in Mass Effect 2, Mass Effect 3, Destiny and Destiny 2; and narrated Khaled Hosseini's audiobook "The Mountains Echoed."

Aghdashloo appeared in Amazon Prime Video's acclaimed television series The Expanse as UN Deputy Undersecretary of Executive Administration Chrisjen Avasarala, a "smart and passionate member of a civil family lineage with a long line of a political lineage who has risen to the top of the Earth's highest ranks without ever standing for office."

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Other awards

• 2007: Arpa Career Achievement Award
• 2013: Noor Iranian Film Festival Achievement Award