Shohreh Aghdashloo

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Shohreh Aghdashloo at San Diego Comic-Con in July 2019

Shohreh Aghdashloo ( listen ? / I PersianAudio file / audio sample شهره آغداشلو Schohreh Aghdaschlu [ ʃohrɛ jɛ ɑɢdɑʃluː ], actually Shohreh Vaziri-Tabar شهره وزیری‌تبار Schohreh Wasiri-Tabar [ ʃoɦrɛ jɛ væziɾitæbɑr ], born May 11, 1952 in Tehran ) is an Iranian film and theater actress . She made her film debut in 1976 with Mohammad Reza Aslani's film Shatranje bad . In 1979 she left her home country for political reasons and moved to London, where she studied political science. In 1987 she moved to Los Angeles, where shemade her breakthroughafter several supporting roles and theater appearances in 2003 with House of Sand and Fog . In 2009 she wasawarded an Emmy for her participation in the television multiparter Die Husseins: In the Center of Power (2008).

biography

Career in Iran

Shohreh Aghdashloo was born in 1952 as Shohreh Vaziri-Tabar, daughter of a wealthy Persian family in Tehran . Her first name means something like 'fame' or 'celebrity'. Aghdashloo began her acting career in Iran at a young age with theater - workshops , through which they could gain experience in several productions. Her actual stage career began in the drama workshop in Tehran. The workshop represented a new kind of theater. It had been started by a group of young actors, intellectuals and screenwriters , including Bijan Saffaree and Abbas Na'lbandian . In 1972 Shohreh married Vaziri-Tabar and took her husband's family name, Aghdashloo.

Shohreh Aghdashloo made her film debut in 1976 with Mohammad Reza Aslani's film Shatranje bad . Gozaresh , a film by Abbas Kiarostami, followed a year later . The family drama portrays a tax collector who is accused of taking bribes. Here Aghdashloo acts as the suicidal wife of the protagonist. Although Shatranje bad and Gozaresh also received international attention under the titles Chess in the Wind and The Report - Gozaresh won the Critique's Prize at the Moscow Film Festival - both films were banned in Iran because of their political message and have never been shown publicly to this day . In 1978 Shohreh Aghdashloo starred in the film Sootah Delaan , which appeared internationally under the title Desiderium . The Iranian Ali Hatami was the director and also wrote the script. In the drama, Aghdashloo plays a prostitute who falls in love with a mentally retarded man (played by Behrooz Vosooghi ).

Escape to England

In 1979, a few months after the start of the Islamic Revolution , the theater company in Tehran was forcibly disbanded. Revolutionary troops closed the theater and sealed the entrance to the building with stones and cement . After this incident, which Shohreh Aghdashloo witnessed, she decided to leave Iran. She left Tehran at four in the morning and it took her 31 days to reach London , a city she knew well from her youth. Her mother had taken her there for language classes every summer . Shohreh Aghdashloo studied political science in England in order to understand what happened in her home country and to help her friends who stayed in Iran. The actress had already excelled as a political activist in Iran , which she continued in England. Aghdashloo stated in interviews that she was demonstrating for the freedom of Iran on the day she arrived in London at Speakers Corner in Hyde Park . Due to her political views, it is still not possible for her to enter Iran.

After four years of studying in London, Aghdashloo obtained a bachelor's degree in the political science sub-discipline of international relations in 1983 . She probably would have used this to start a political career had she not received a call from a befriended screenwriter and director the night she graduated. He offered her the lead role in the play he had just finished and she had the script sent to her. The play Rainbow tells the story of an Iranian who fled to London after being accused in his home country of belonging to the elite circle of the Shah . With Shohreh Aghdashloo in the lead role, the piece was very well received by critics.

Career in the USA

In 1987, the actress moved to Los Angeles at the invitation of her second husband, screenwriter and actor Houshang Touzie . Aghdashloo met an agent and auditioned in her new home, but it was not easy for her to break into Hollywood as a heavy accented Middle Eastern actress , and she was concerned about the type of role she was assigned to. She auditioned for a guest role on the television series Matlock , but was not very enthusiastic when she was given the role of a student suspected of belonging to a terrorist group. Although the role was against her principles, she enjoyed working with the title character Andy Griffith but vowed never to be compromised again. After filming was over, she let her agent know that he should never again send her to auditions for the roles of terrorists or battered wives from the Middle East .

In the following years she was very successful in the Iranian-American community with her husband and the jointly founded theater group “Workshop 79”, which is named after the year in which Aghdashloo's Tehran theater group was banned. The piece Sweet Smell of Love ( Booyeh Khosh-e Eshgh ), written by Aghdashloo's husband, was very well received by critics and audiences in the USA. The play about the life of an immigrant family influenced the attitude of the Iranian community towards theater . Hundreds of thousands of people saw the production in over 30 countries around the world. With the sequel Our Share of the Father's House , Shohreh Aghdashloo and Houshang Touzie were able to build on their previous success.

While Shohreh Aghdashloo was very successful in the theater, her film career stagnated and she was seen in numerous supporting roles in less important films, such as Twenty Bucks , Surviving Paradise and the critically acclaimed work Maryam . Aghdashloo also appeared in Possessed and Pulse , two short films that are part of a trilogy by Iranian video artist Shirin Neshat . Aghdashloo quit her agent a short time later because she did not want to sell her soul to roles she did not want to play and gave up her dreams of a film career in the United States . In 2002 she wrote the Aryana Farshad documentary Mystic Iran: The Unseen World and acted as narrator . In 2009 she was to lend her voice to the computer game Mass Effect 2 and in 2012 the sequel Mass Effect 3 .

Breakthrough in Hollywood

Then came House of Sand and Fog , a dream project by Shohreh Aghdashloo. She had read the book the film was based on while driving to a theater in San Francisco and told her husband that it would be very unfair if one day the book was made without her playing the role of Nadi. Her husband Houshang Touzie was also the first to find out about the commitment to the House of Sands and Fog . The DreamWorks film studio struggled to cast the role of Nadi, and the film's casting director Debora Aquila asked various people from the Iranian-American community who was the best actress in the Iranian entertainment industry right now. Aghdashloo's name was mentioned over and over and Aquila contacted her. Shohreh Aghdashloo thought at first that they only wanted to cast her for an insignificant supporting role; when she found out that it was the part of the nadi, she immediately agreed to audition.

After two auditions with director Vadim Perelman , he announced that she was a beautiful controlled woman, while Nadi was a very emotional person. He asked her to come back, but without makeup , taken away and with the task of making Perelman cry. Aghdashloo then read the script again. She found a worn black shirt and jeans, the next morning they neither washed nor combed their hair. At the third audition the next day, in the fourth scene, she managed to move Vadim Perelman through her crying fit, and she got the part of Nadi. Perelman kissed her forehead and said, "Welcome aboard, Shohreh."

After 25 years in the acting business, Shohreh Aghdashloo celebrated her breakthrough in international cinema in 2003 with Vadim Perelman's House of Sand and Fog . In the drama she plays alongside Ben Kingsley and Jennifer Connelly . The film, which is based on a novel by Andre Dubus III , tells the story of the alcoholic Kathy (played by Jennifer Connelly), who loses the bungalow by the sea that was once owned by her father through a bureaucratic clause and fights for it to win back. Aghdashloo lends a steely dignity to the character of Nadi, the wife of a respected former colonel in the Iranian Air Force (played by Ben Kingsley), who after immigrating to the USA keeps his family afloat with cheap jobs and buys the expropriated bungalow by the sea . Critics have referred to Aghdashloos Nadi as the heart of the film, acting as the voice of reason between loyalty to her husband and the compassion she feels for Jennifer Connelly's character.

Despite her constant work in the theater and occasionally in films, she described the nadi as the role of her life. In fact, Shohreh Aghdashloo's play has received critical acclaim and has won numerous awards in the United States, including a. she was named Best Supporting Actress by the Los Angeles and New York Critics' Associations in 2004. In the same year she was given the honor of becoming the first Iranian woman and the first actress from the Middle East to be nominated for an Oscar for best supporting actress. However, Aghdashloo lost the film award to Renée Zellweger , who was awarded for Anthony Minghella's American Civil War epic On the Way to Cold Mountain . As a result, the longstanding press ban in Iran about the actress was lifted.

Success on US television

Despite the great success with House of Sand and Fog , only a few role offers followed, which Shohreh Aghdashloo considered. In 2004 she played the mother of Jonathan Ahdout , her film son from House of Sand and Fog , in a recurring role in the fourth season of the critically acclaimed television series 24 . The role of Dina Araz, a Muslim terrorist , has been controversially received by the Arab-American community. In an interview with the US magazine TIME had been found Shohreh Aghdashloo that they first did not intend the stereotype to strengthen the Muslim terrorists, but then promised because of the complexity of the role for which she later nominated for the Satellite Awards 2005 as best supporting actress received. Further supporting roles in cinema productions followed, with which she was unable to build on her earlier success, including the 2006 media satire American Dreamz - Alles nur Show , the action film X-Men: The Last Resistance and the love drama Das Haus am See .

After the part of Elizabeth in Catherine Hardwicke's biblical film material It came to pass at the time ... Aghdashloo turned back to television work. Between 2006 and 2007 she appeared as Charlie on the CBS crime series Smith and had a guest appearance on the popular doctors series Grey's Anatomy (2007). A year later she received an engagement for the television series The Husseins: In the Center of Power , which earned her an Emmy . In the format co-produced by BBC and HBO , which spreads the family and political relations of Saddam Hussein (played by Jigal Naor ), Aghdashloo took on the role of the first wife of the Iraqi ex-dictator, Sadschida Talfah . Described by critics as an Iraqi but humorless version of The Sopranos , the New York Times praised the actress for her charm, big, spirited eyes and her sulphurous voice reminiscent of Anne Bancroft , but noted on the edge that Aghdashloo apparently played every role for Middle Eastern women over 30 took over.

The feature film The Stoning of Soraya M. followed in 2009, based on the successful non-fiction book of the same name by Freidoune Sahebjam from 1994. The drama tells the story of the young Iranian Soraya (played by Mozhan Marnò ), who does not consent to her husband's divorce and is then stoned by the village community. Aghdashloo took on the part of the narrator, or the victim's aunt, who was the only one to turn against the mob. Because of her role in a film that explores the fate of Iranian women, the Los Angeles Times called her a "fearless advocate for Islamic women." "I decided, no matter what, that I would defend human rights in Iran and shed light on the injustices in Iran," Aghdashloo told the San Francisco Chronicle in late June 2009 . “I turned myself into an actress with a job. When topics like this come out, I feel like it tells of duty. It's not just a job for me. ”That same year, she won the Satellite Awards for Best Actress. This was followed primarily by appearances on US television, including guest roles in the series Law & Order: Special Victims Unit , Dr. House , Navy CIS (all 2011) and Portlandia (2012).

Shohreh Aghdashloo was married to the Iranian painter Aydin Aghdashloo from 1972 to 1980 . She has been married to Houshang Touzie for the second time since 1985. She has a daughter with the actor and screenwriter.

Filmography (selection)

Awards

Web links

Commons : Shohreh Aghdashloo  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Johnson, G. Allen: A face of Iran . In: The San Francisco Chronicle. June 25, 2009, p. F22.
  2. ^ Stanley, Alessandra: Hussein Family Values. In: The New York Times, December 5, 2008, Section C, p. 1
  3. ↑ Piccalo, Gina: Fearless advocate for Islamic women . In: Los Angeles Times, June 23, 2009, Part D, p. 1.
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on August 9, 2005 .
personal data
SURNAME Aghdashloo, Shohreh
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Vaziri-Tabar, Shohreh (real name); شهره آغداشلو (Persian); شهره وزیری تبار (Persian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Iranian film and stage actress
DATE OF BIRTH May 11, 1952
PLACE OF BIRTH Tehran