Golshifteh Farahani

Biography

Rahavard Farahani (Persian: رهاورد فراهانی; born 10 July 1983), known professionally as Golshifteh Farahani (گلشیفته فراهانی), is an Iranian actress. She gained recognition for her performances in The Pear Tree (1998), which won her the Best Actress award at the Fajr International Film Festival, Half Moon (2006), which won the Golden Shell award at the 2006 San Sebastián Film Festival, and M for Mother (2006), which won her a Roshd International Film Festival award and was chosen to represent Iran in the Best Foreign Film Category of that year's Academy Awards. She appeared in a supporting role in the American film Body of Lies (2008), which stirred controversy in Iran, making her the first Iranian in a Hollywood production since Iran's Islamic Revolution in 1979. Subsequently, she was banned from working in Iran by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance for not wearing a headscarf and eventually exiled. Since then, she had been based in Paris until November 2017, when she moved to Ibiza. Her later work spans Iranian, European, Israeli, and American productions, including About Elly (2009), The Patience Stone (2012), for which she won a Best Actress award at the Gijón International Film Festival, and was nominated for Most Promising Actress at the 39th César Awards, and Two Friends (2015), for which she was nominated for Best Female Revelation at the 21st Lumière Awards. She has also appeared in Paterson (2016), The Song of Scorpions (2017), Girls of the Sun (2018), Extraction (2020) and its sequel (2023), as well as the television series Invasion (2021–present) and Alpha (2025). She also starred in two Israeli films directed by Eran Riklis: Shelter (2017) and Reading Lolita in Tehran (2024).

Bio from Wikipedia