Shohreh Aghdashloo

Early life

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. 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.

Once she arrived in England, she earned a Bachelor's degree in international relations because of her interest in politics after having to leave her home country. She was already familiar with England, as her parents took her to London as a child. She then continued to pursue her acting career, which brought her to Los Angeles. In 1987, Aghdashloo married actor/playwright Houshang Touzie. They have a daughter, Tara Touzie, born 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 diaspora. Though born to a Muslim family, she never practiced the religion.

Career

Aghdashloo made her American film debut in 1989 in a starring role in Guests of Hotel Astoria. Her television debut came in 1990 in a guest role in the 25 September, two-hour episode of the NBC television series Matlock, titled "Nowhere to Turn: A Matlock Mystery Movie". Aghdashloo played a saleslady and was credited for this simply as Shohreh. She returned to American television three years later when she played Malika (wife of the storekeeper Rashidi) in the "Jerome's In The House" episode of the popular comedy series Martin (aired April 1, 1993, and credited as "Shohreh Vaziri"). 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 (راز بهشت), the first English language Iranian American feature film released in the United States, written and directed by Kamshad Kooshan. Having been shown at major International Film Festivals, Surviving Paradise went on to become one of the most well received Iranian films in the U.S.

Aghdashloo made a brief two-episode performance in a 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. 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 played opposite Ben Kingsley and Jennifer Connelly in director Vadim Perelman's House of Sand and Fog (2003). She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, however the award was won by Renée Zellweger for Cold Mountain.

Following this exposure, she received good reviews for her 12 episodes on Season 4 of the Fox television series 24, 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 it. 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 Persian Jew; and the "Lost in America" episode of the medical drama ER, playing a bereaved mother who loses her daughter in the trauma room.

Aghdashloo continued to appear in films. She played Dr. Adani in the film The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005) and also appeared as Kavita Rao in the sequel X-Men: The Last Stand (2006). Two other roles 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.

Her 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 the animated movie Babak and Friends – A First Norooz. She also starred in the 2004 hourlong 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.

At the end of 2006, Aghdashloo appeared as Elizabeth, cousin of Mary, mother of Jesus, in the biblical film The Nativity Story. Aghdashloo dismissed the irony that she is a Muslim playing a Jewish character.

In 2008, she served as an official festival judge for the second annual Noor Iranian Film Festival in Los Angeles. The festival would later honor her in 2013 with an Achievement Award for her acting career.

Aghdashloo plays the lead character, Zahra Khanum, in the film 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.

In the movie Mona's Dream, Aghdashloo portrays Mona's mother, who is a Bahá'í.

On September 29, 2009, Aghdashloo won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie for her supporting role on the HBO original miniseries House of Saddam.

Speaking to a crowd of over 1,400 people at George Washington University's Lisner Auditorium on September 12, 2009, Aghdashloo, author Dr. Azar Nafisi, and Dr. Dwight Bashir, Associate Director for Policy at the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, added their voices to those concerned about human rights in Iran and the persecution of Bahá'ís in Iran. Aghdashloo's talk in particular was posted to YouTube.

Aghdashloo voiced Admiral Shala'Raan vas Tonbay, a character from the video game Mass Effect 2, a role that she reprised for Mass Effect 3.

On October 9, 2010, the Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans awarded Aghdashloo their Career Achievement Award during its first annual gala.

On January 19, 2011, Aghdashloo starred in "Dirty", an episode of the NBC crime drama Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, as Detective Saliyah "Sunny" Qadri.

In September 2011, it was confirmed that Aghdashloo would star in a London show, the Almeida Theatre's adaptation of Federico Garcia Lorca's play, The House of Bernarda Alba, as Bernarda Alba. The show ran from January 19 to March 10, 2012.

In 2013, she co-narrated Khaled Hosseini's novel, And the Mountains Echoed, in its audiobook version.

Aghdashloo starred in the film Rosewater (2014) and in Septembers of Shiraz (2015). Her most recent TV credit is her continuing featured role in Syfy's television series The Expanse (2015-present), as the Machiavellian UN executive Chrisjen Avasarala, a "smart and passionate member of a political family legacy who has risen high in the ranks of Earth's governing body without once standing for election".

Other awards