Shohreh Aghdashloo: Actor, Activist, Philanthropist, Freedom Fighter
Photography by Meera Fox, Hair by Minoo Bahri, Makeup by André Sarmiento, costume design by Joanne Hansen, styling by Maison Priveé
Shohreh Aghdashloo is the first Iranian actress to have been nominated for an Academy Award. She was nominated in 2003 for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as the wife of Ben Kingsley’s character in the movie House of Sand and Fog, based on the novel by André Dubus III. For that role, once they knew they needed to cast an Iranian actress, the casting directors from Dreamworks Entertainment had taken a door-to-door poll in the Persian neighborhoods of Los Angeles to ask Persian restaurant and shop owners who their favorite Iranian actress was. Shohreh had been the overwhelming choice.
Shohreh won an Emmy Award in 2009 for her role as the wife of Saddaam Hussein in HBO’s House of Sadaam. She had previously declined all offers to play terrorists in movies, as a matter of ethical resistance. She resented that those were the only roles available for Middle Eastern actors to play in American cinema for decades. Shohreh is a very proud American citizen, and she continues to break stereotypes and barriers for women of Middle Eastern descent, in Hollywood and beyond. She has almost singlehandedly proven that Middle Eastern actors can successfully play all kinds of roles in Hollywood. |
Shohreh Aghdashloo was born and raised in Tehran and lived there happily until the age of 26. She had an idyllic childhood with liberal, highly educated parents and grandparents who taught her the value of having a critical, inquisitive mind, questioning authority, being outspoken, fighting for what is just, and standing up for what you believe in. She was always an actress, from early childhood. She would entertain family members and friends by doing scarily accurate comic impressions. She noticed everyone’s idiosyncracies and could mimic them precisely. Shohreh spent summers during her childhood with her fifteen cousins at her grandmother’s house on the Caspian Sea. Her cousin Nasrin, who was older than her, would write plays for she and Shohreh to act out, to entertain the others. Aside from carrying the lead role, Shohreh was also in charge of costumes, hair and makeup.
Shohreh fell in love with the cinema at age 16, upon seeing the movie Gone with The Wind. At the intermission she told her mother “Someday I will be a movie star. And if I have a daughter, I will name her Tara, after Scarlett O’Hara’s estate.” But professional acting was not going to be an option while Shohreh was living in her parents’ home. She was expected to become either an engineer or a doctor, and had very little choice in the matter. Shohreh was a great beauty as a teen, and was asked by many fashion designers to model for them, which was an activity considered inappropriate for young ladies at that time. The shows she walked in were private and attended by a female-only audience. Most were specifically for the purpose of showing designer gowns to the royalty of her country. Doing so allowed her access to the inner circle of Iranian politicians at an early age. She modeled dresses for the queen and had tea on the palace terrace with the king and queen once. As they sat there looking over the city, with all its new construction happening, admiring the view, the Shah said to Shohreh “We’ve come this far to modernize Iran. Look at what you can see. I won’t stop until it’s complete.” Then he turned to look her directly in the eye and said “I am so proud of us.” Shohreh knew she should not admire this dictator, but she could not help but feel his palpable love for their country and his excitement about its potential. |
Shohreh had started modeling at 16, in secret, without her parents’ permission, since she knew they would disapprove. Her secret was out, however, when a runway shot of her was so gorgeous that it got a full first page all to itself in the daily newspaper in Tehran. Her brother and she scrambled all over their neighborhood and spent their savings buying up every copy of the issue, in hopes that they could avoid their father seeing it. He found a copy at the local barbershop when they told him the paper had not come that day, “for some odd reason.” He was angry with them for lying, but said he had known all along that Shohreh had been modeling, and had been okay with it, as long as it was not a matter of public record. Now it was. “You look stunning, very ladylike, in the picture though,” he had to admit.
Shohreh was very close with her grandparents. Her grandfather allowed teenage Shohreh to hang out with him and his buddies, who came over often to sit in his neighbor’s study to discuss politics. They were professors, intellectuals, and an Olympic wrestler. Shohreh enjoyed listening to them talk for hours and hours. They were Democrats in a land that had suffered a coup. The Shah, who was then in control of the country, had been assisted in his 1953 coup d’état by the American CIA. Shohreh’s grandfather and his friends supported the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran, whom the Shah had placed under house arrest when he took over. It was becoming more and more dangerous to hold liberal beliefs in Iran at that time, especially Nationalist, Democratic or Communist ones. People who openly supported either the former democratic nationalist government or the Communist party were being rounded up, tortured and executed. Her grandfather’s crowd had to close the windows and the shutters in the study while they spoke, and had to keep their beliefs secret. It was an important education for Shohreh, who soaked up all their ideas and interests and then developed her own independent political opinions as well. |
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