Shohreh Aghdashloo

Shohreh Aghdashloo is an Iranian-American actress.

Date of birth

Shohreh Aghdashloo was born Shohreh Vaziri-Tabar on May 11, 1952 in Tehran, Iran.

Family

Aghdashloo was born in Tehran, Iran, as Shohreh Vaziri-Tabar, the daughter of Effie (née al-Sadat) and Anushiravan Vaziri-Tabar. She has three brothers: Shahram, Shahriar and Shahrokh. 

Education

Once Aghdashloo arrived in England, she earned a bachelor's degree in international relations at Brunel University because of her interest in politics after having to leave her home country. She was already familiar with England, as her parents had taken her to London as a child. 

Love life

Her stage name is from the family name of her first husband, painter Aydin Aghdashloo. After their marriage in 1972 when she was 19 and he was 31, she began attending theatre workshops, against the wishes of her family. She had always wanted to be an actress, and soon began playing leading roles in Iranian theatre and film. They did not have children and were divorced in 1979, when she left Iran for England at the start of the Iranian Revolution. She went on to marry actor/playwright Houshang Touzie, performing in a number of his plays, successfully taking them to national and international stages.

Net worth

Not yet established.

Career

In the 1970s at age 20, she achieved nationwide stardom in her homeland of Iran, starring in some prominent pictures such as The Report (1977) directed by the renowned Abbas Kiarostami, which won critics awards at the Moscow Film Festival.

In 1978, she won wider acclaim and established herself as one of Iran's leading ladies with Desiderium (1978) directed by the late Ali Hatami.

During the 1978 Islamic revolution, Aghdashloo left Iran for England, to complete her education. Her interest in politics and her concern for social injustice in the world would lead her to receive a Bachelor's degree in International Relations.

She continued to pursue her acting career, which eventually brought her to Los Angeles, California in 1987.  However, this was not easy getting work in Hollywood as a Middle Eastern actress with an accent; she had roles in some decent, though not great, films, including Twenty Bucks (1993), Surviving Paradise (2000) and Maryam (2002). She received good reviews for her 12 episodes on the fourth season of the Fox television series 24 (2001) as Dina Araz, a terrorist undercover as a well-to-do housewife and mother in Los Angeles. She had to wait quite some time to receive her break in Hollywood.

And finally, years after having read the acclaimed novel "House of Sand and Fog", DreamWorks were in the process of bringing the story to the silver screen. After having cast Ben Kingsley (as Massoud Amir Behrani) and Jennifer Connelly in the lead roles, they were looking for a relatively unknown Iranian actress to play Kingsley's wife, Nadi. Shohreh Aghdashloo was duly cast. She stole the limelight and earned herself an Academy Award nomination as best supporting actress amongst many other prestigious awards, including the Independent Spirit Sward as best supporting actress in a feature film, the New York and Los Angeles film critics award and others.

She has continued to play supporting and character roles in film and television, including a starring role as Chrisjen Avasarala on The Expanse (2015–present), and won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie for her work in the HBO original miniseries House of Saddam (2008).

In 2013, she released her autobiography titled The Alley of Love and Yellow Jasmines.

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Shohreh Aghdashloo
First Name Shohreh
Surname Aghdashloo
Born 11th May, 1952
Home City Tehran, Iran
Current City