It was 4:30 a.m. in Tehran on Feb. 28, 1979, when Shohreh Aghdashloo started her journey to the West in the company of two friends. Driving at 30 miles an hour, it took them seven days to reach the Turkish border. Claiming they were on their way to a short vacation, the women made it across the continent, to the former Yugoslavia, then Paris, and finally London. “When I set foot in London, all I could think of were the words ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy,’” she recalled.
Her experience led her, eventually, to take on political roles that brought new life to marginalized women. Later this month, she’ll portray Farida Azizi—an Afghan activist who fought for women’s rights under the stifling rule of the Taliban—in SEVEN, the documentary play that honors courageous women activists from seven countries and will open The Daily Beast’s Women in the World Stories and Solutions summit on March 12.
All of a sudden, Aghdashloo became the rarest of actresses: a middle-aged Middle Eastern woman with accented English and a future in Hollywood.
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Aghdashloo, who today lives in Los Angeles, is the only Iranian actor ever to be nominated for an Oscar. “You are limited,” she was told by an agent 20 years ago. “Well yes,” she’d replied in her deep, dark-velvet tones, “with an Iranian accent, jet-black hair and no experience in Hollywood, of course I am.” Yet somehow, in an industry known for typecasting mercilessly, Aghdashloo has carved a unique career for herself, taking on a wide array of unconventional roles.
In the past decade alone, the comely actress has appeared in Hollywood productions such as X-Men: The Last Stand and The Lake House, television series (she played a terrorist in Fox’s 24), art films (Shirin Neshat’s Possessed and Pulse, featured in museums around the world), and also Persian plays. Most prominent: her nomination for an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress, for her role in 2003's The House of Sand and Fog, opposite Ben Kingsley and Jennifer Connelly.
All of a sudden, Aghdashloo became the rarest of actresses: a middle-aged Middle Eastern woman with accented English and a future in Hollywood.
Aghdashloo had launched her career in Iran in the early 1970s. Her family’s high social rank had precluded her from becoming an actress, so she married an artist who assured her he would let her do as she pleased. Thus, soon after her marriage, Aghdashloo joined a drama workshop. Her first breakthrough came in 1976, when she starred in Gozaresh (The Report), a film directed by Abbas Kiarostami. She then became a national sensation when she accepted the role of a young prostitute in Sooteh-Delan (Broken Hearts), a soon-to-be classic by the legendary Ali Hatami.
• Hillary Clinton to Appear at Women in the WorldA year later, in February 1979, Aghdahsloo’s life—like that of millions of other Iranians—would take a decisive turn. Demonstrations had spread throughout the streets across the country, as Iranians clamored for the fall of the shah’s dynasty and the return of Ayatollah Khomeini. It was the onset of the Islamic revolution, which would eradicate, among many other things, nearly all the freedoms women had achieved in the previous half-century.
As a consequence, Aghdashloo decided to study politics in England, and later received a bachelor of arts in international relations. “I was convinced that I had left my acting career behind in Tehran, but this was not to be my fate,” she said. She came to realize that she could make a compelling political statement by bringing harrowing human stories to existence on the stage. In the end, it was this decision that brought her to Hollywood, and eventually to The House of Sand and Fog 20 years later. In it, she played Nadi Behrani, a voiceless Iranian woman trapped in a web of tragic circumstances brought about by her family’s migration to a new land, America. At once, after years of Aghdashloo’s name being banned in Iran, it was printed again with the news of her Oscar nomination.
Earning this recognition, said Aghdashloo, primarily meant that she had acquired an influential voice as an Iranian woman. Her presence in the United States, she points out, is of a political nature, so her professional choices are intrinsically political. Her latest film, The Stoning of Soraya M., directed by the Iranian-born Cyrus Nowrasteh, is the most poignant example of this stance. The Stoning recounts the story of Soraya Manouchehri, executed for adultery in an Iranian village after being framed by her husband, who sought to marry an adolescent girl and rid himself of the mother of his six children. Aghdashloo portrays Soraya’s aunt, Zahra, the diffident feminine voice of the village, its crying conscience, and the one witness who will tell the story to a journalist who happens to be driving through the village. “Yesterday the devil himself visited this town,” she whispers to him.
By taking on such powerful roles, Aghdashloo hopes to lend a face to the forgotten women banished or assassinated by the Iranian regime. Despite everything they have endured, she believes, it is the women who have become the unwitting heroes of a new country.
Lila Azam Zanganeh has taught literature and cinema at Harvard University. She is a literary contributor to Le Monde and a host of other European and American publications. In 2006, she edited a collection of narrative essays on Iran. Her first book—Light of My Life, or How to Net the Incredible Happiness of an Extraordinary Writer —was published in 2009.
