Shohreh Aghdashloo was nominated as Best Supporting Actress in 2004 in her role as Ben Kingsley's beleaguered and often-confused wife, Nadi, in the movie, House of Sand and Fog. A film star in her native country of Iran, where she was born in 1952, Aghdashloo fled Iran in 1978 after the Islamic Revolution and lived in London before settling in Calabasas, CA. She eventually won roles in American movies such as, The Guests of Hotel Astoria, Surviving Paradise, America So Beautiful and, most recently, House of Sand and Fog.
Career Highlights: The Lake House, House of Sand and Fog, Maryam
First Major Screen Credit: Sutedelan (1977)
Biography
An Iranian actress whose strong political beliefs almost led her to a career as a journalist, Shohreh Aghdashloo decided instead that she could reach more people by working in film and theater -- and with her Oscar-nominated role in the tragedy House of Sand and Fog, she found an audience the size of which she never dreamed possible. Born in Tehran in 1952 to an intellectual, creative family, Aghdashloo was drawn to the theater at an early age, and by her twenties was performing in various cutting-edge performance groups, among them the acclaimed Drama Workshop of Tehran. Filmmakers often drew upon talent from the Workshop, and Aghdashloo was cast by directors Abbas Kiarostami and Ali Hatami -- two towering figures of the nascent Iranian New Wave -- to play starring roles in several of their formally adventurous, socially progressive productions, including 1977's Gozaresh and Sutedelan.
But in the late '70s, with the Ayatollah Khomeini reintroducing an era of strict rule based on religious doctrine, Aghdashloo's work as a performer was either censored or forbidden outright. Eager to escape the turmoil of the Iranian Revolution, Aghdashloo left her husband and her career to go to London, where she earned a degree in international relations. She was on the verge of accepting a position at a newspaper when a friend presented her with a play, called Rainbow, about the Revolution and its discontents. He had written a role specifically for her, and Aghdashloo believed in the project enough to put her journalism career on hold -- for what would turn out to be an indefinite length of time. Rainbow was such a success, it toured the United States, where Aghdashloo was reunited with a Workshop colleague of hers, Houshang Touzie; a romance soon developed, and two married in Los Angeles in the late '80s.
Discouraged by the dearth of non-stereotyped roles for Middle Eastern women in Hollywood, Aghdashloo focused her attention instead on stage work, even creating a traveling theater troupe with her husband that performed plays in Farsi for Iranian audiences. Her occasional film work included roles in such topical dramas as America So Beautiful and Maryam, both about the struggle of Iranian immigrants in the U.S. It was such work that caught the attention of director Vadim Perelman, who was looking to cast the supporting role of Nadi in his big-screen adaptation of the bestseller House of Sand and Fog. Perelman and his casting agent contacted Aghdashloo directly -- at the time, the actress had no agent or manager -- and were soon convinced that she was the woman for the part. Having read the book upon its release, Aghdashloo had long envisioned ways that she could play Nadi, a strong but subservient Iranian-American wife and mother caught between her husband's wishes and her own conscience. Opposite the formidable Ben Kingsley in a cast of established performers, Aghdashloo's subtle, simmering performance brought her kudos from the New York Film Critics and Los Angeles Film Critics Associations, both of whom named her 2003's Best Supporting Actress. The Academy followed suit, nominating her against such Hollywood stalwarts as Renée Zellweger and Holly Hunter.
Following a recurring role on the wildly popular television hit 24 that served well to introduce the increasingly prominant actress to audiences outside of the art-house circuit, Aghdashloo turned in impressive supporting performances in such popular wide release films as The Exorcism of Emily Rose, American Dreamz, and X-Men: The Last Stand. In 2006 Aghdashloo would heed the call of Hollywood once again to take a featured role as the best friend of Sandra Bullock's lonely character in the romantic fantasy remake The Lake House. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide
Aghdashloo was born in Tehran, Iran as Pari Vaziri-Tabar ("Aghdashloo" is the family name of her former husband, famous Iranian painter Aydin Aghdashloo), to a wealthy secular Shiite Muslim family. Aghdashloo started acting at the age of 20. Following numerous starring roles on the stage, she was offered her first film role in Gozāresh (The Report) directed by renowned director Abbas Kiarostami, which won the Critics Award at the Moscow Film Festival. Her next film was Shatranje Baad (loosely translated: Chess With The Wind), directed by Mohammad Reza Aslani which screened at several film festivals. Both films were banned in her home country, but in 1978, Aghdashloo won acclaim for her performance in Sooteh Delan (Broken Hearts), directed by the late Iranian filmmaker Ali Hatami which established her as one of Iran's leading actresses.
During the 1979 Revolution, Aghdashloo left Iran for Windermere, Cumbria, England in the year 1978, where she completed her education. Aghdashloo still owns a separate vacation villa that she attends during most summer parts of the year. She earned a Bachelor's degree in International Relations. She continued to pursue her acting career, however, which brought her to Los Angeles. In 1987 Aghdashloo married actor/playwright Houshang Touzie. They had one daughter in 1989. She has since performed in a number of Touzie's plays, successfully taking them to national and international stages, primarily in the Iranian community.[1]
Career in the United States
Aghdashloo made her American film debut in 1989 in a starring role in Guests Of Hotel Astoria. Her TV debut came in 1990 in a guest role in the 25 September, two-hour episode of the NBCtelevision seriesMatlock, titled "Nowhere to Turn: A Matlock Mystery Movie". Aghdashloo played a saleslady and was credited for this simply as Shohreh. She returned to American TV three years later when she played a guest role in the popular comedy series Martin. In the episode from April 1, 1993, she played the character Malika. In that same year she also made her next film appearance in Twenty Bucks, playing Ghada Holiday. After seven years, Aghdashloo returned once again to the American film industry in 2000, starring in the critically acclaimed Surviving Paradise, the first English language Iranian-American feature film released in the United States, written & directed by Kamshad Kooshan. She made a brief two-episode performance in short-lived Honduran television series, The Honduran Suburbs, in which she played Zereshk, an Iranian woman who had arrived in the country to help the poor situation.[2] In that year she also starred in Maryam (in which she played Mrs. Armin). After appearing as an exiled actress in America So Beautiful in 2001, Aghdashloo shot to fame in 2003 co-starring 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, which she lost to Renee Zellweger for Cold Mountain.
Following this exposure, she received good reviews for her 12 episodes on Season 4 of the Fox Broadcastingtelevision series24, playing Dina Araz, a terrorist undercover in Los Angeles as a well-to-do housewife and mother. This storyline raised controversy in Iranian-American and Muslim-American communities, and in an interview with Time magazine, Aghdashloo stated that although she had previously resisted reinforcing the stereotype of Muslims as terrorists, the strength and complexity of the role convinced her to accept the part. Jonathan Ahdout, a Jewish actor, played her son both in House of Sand and Fog and 24. She went on to guest star on two episodes of NBC shows that were broadcast the same night, March 23, 2006: The "Cowboys and Iranians" episode of the comedy Will & Grace, in which she played a wannabe interior designer who, to the confusion of Grace, is a Jewish Persian; and the "Lost in America" episode of the medical drama ER, playing a bereaved mother who loses her daughter in the trauma room. Her real daughter Vanessa played the young girl.
Shohreh continued to appear in films. She played Dr. Adani in the 2005 movie The Exorcism of Emily Rose and also appeared as the Asian-IndianDr. Kavita Rao in the film X-Men: The Last Stand (2006). Two other parts also came her way in 2006, that of a wealthy housewife whose family lovingly takes in their cousin (who has been sent by Pakistani terrorists to kill the American president) in the satirical comedy American Dreamz and that of Dr. Anna Klyczynski, friend and colleague to Sandra Bullock's character Kate, in The Lake House.
Other credits include narrating and producing a documentary Mystic Iran: The Unseen World, narrating the PBS documentary Iran: A Celebration of Art and Culture, narrating the audiobook version of Inside the Kingdom: My Life in Saudi Arabia and lending her vocal talents to animated movie Babak & Friends: A First Norooz. She also starred in the 2004 one-hour-long pilot episode The Secret Service (which was not picked up) and played the character Charlie in two of three aired episodes of the flopped TV series Smith.
In the movie Mona's Dream, set to be released in March 2009, Aghdashloo portrays Mona's mother, who is a Baha'i.
Aghdashloo plays the lead character, Zahra Khanum, in the anti-capital punishment movie The Stoning of Soraya M., a drama film released on June 26, 2009 in the United States. This film marks the first time during her career in America where she plays a leading character in a major feature-length motion picture, and could possibly mark her comeback as a leading actress in over 30 years.
