Shohreh Aghdashloo

Shohreh Aghdashloo born May 11, 1952, is an Oscar nominated, Emmy winning Iranian-American actress. She was born in Tehran, Iran as Pari Vaziri-Tabar ("Aghdashloo" is the family name of her former husband, famous Iranian painter Aydin Aghdashloo). 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 England. Later she immigrated to the U.S., and formed a Persian Drama Production company called Workshop 79, together with Iranian actor and playwright Houshang Touzie. Workshop 79's most recent production is "an Iranian in Heaven" starting its US tour in December 2009.

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 two-hour episode of the NBC television series Matlock. 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.

Aghdashloo is a 2009 Emmy Award winner, for her supporting role on the HBO original miniseries, House of Saddam. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband (Houshang Touzie) and their daughter Tara.