Persian American Actors
These actors were all born in America to one or two Persian (Iranian) parents.
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Jonathan Ahdout was born on 18 March 1989 in Santa Monica, California, USA. He is an actor, known for House of Sand and Fog (2003), 24 (2001) and 2 Guns (2013).- Actor
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Dan Ahdoot is a stand-up comic, actor, writer and producer based out of New York City and Los Angeles.
Dan is a national headliner who has been a frequent guest on The Tonight Show, and is an actor on Netflix's Cobra Kai, The Crew, and the NBC series Bajillion Dollar Properties. He has been on ABC's Super Fun Night with Rebel Wilson, Comedy Central's Workaholics and @midnight, Disney Channel's Kickin' It, and Adult Swim's Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell.
Dan has a diverse writing career as well. He has written the film Public Disturbance for Lionsgate, and has developed for television at CBS, ABC, FOX, Hulu, and Freeform.
He also hosts the #1 food podcast in the country, "Green Eggs and Dan."- Actor
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Max Amini was born in Tucson, Arizona. He was raised on the East Coast and graduated from UCLA's school of Theater, Film and Television in 2004. As an actor, Max has numerous film and television credits including NBC's Heroes, regular appearances on Comedy Central's Mind of Mencia, Netflix original Real Rob, and leading roles in several feature films.
Max is a sensational international Stand-up comedian and has been headlining his own tours since 2012. Every year he performs in Austrellia, German, London, Amsterdam, Dubai, Canada, and the list goes on. He's truly a one of a kind talent and he has a loyal fan base that truly loves him. For more info please visit his website.- Actress
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- Script and Continuity Department
Catherine was born in London, but she moved to California with her Iranian mother at the age of two. Her mother still acts as her personal assistant. As a girl, she acted in various TV advertisements. She went to UCLA to study biology/ pre-medicine, but she dropped out to become a model in Japan. She moved back into acting with a Mexican commercial for American Express, and then she followed that up by being Isabella Rossellini's nude body double in Death Becomes Her (1992), when she also met her future husband, Adam Beason, who was the director's Robert Zemeckis's assistant. As of 2018, the two reside near Los Angeles with their daughter Gemma Beason and son Ronan Beason.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Nadia Bjorlin was born the fifth out of six children. Her parents were Ulf Björlin (a Swedish conductor and composer, known to be the world's most active opera composer during the 20th century) and Fary Bjorlin. Her siblings are Katja, Kaj, Kamilla, Ulf Jr and Jean Paul. (Each sibling have a history of artistic or creative work in their background. A very stunning and talented family indeed). Nadia was born in Newport, Rhode Island (USA), but her family soon moved to Sweden. This was only for a few short years before moving back to the USA again.
Nadia worked the opera scene before becoming an actress. It was a fast lane change by a sudden contract with NBC who needed an opera singing girl for a permanent part in a television series. Nadia has since then appeared in both movies and TV series. She has played lead characters in big screen productions and she has been a guest star in shows like CSI, Two an a half men, Two Broke Girls, as well as other comedy shows. Her talent is strong in comedy as well as in drama. She is also quite the dancer, which can be seen in Ricky Martin's music video "Shake Your Bon Bon". She was second runner up placing in Miss Teen Florida. Her voice won a sought after first place in a world proclaimed a opera competition in Italy.
Nadia is fluent in Swedish, English and Farsi. Because of her education in opera, she is schooled in several more languages like Italian and French. Nadia was a child prodigy who excelled in her studies at school as well as voice, theater, dance, and music. She started her professional career at six years old and won several awards while attending the Interlochen Center for the Arts and the Boston University Tanglewood Institute.
She currently (2014) lives in California. Her school years were mostly in Palm Beach, Florida and New York. Her most beloved father died of leukemia in 1993. This has inspired Nadia to become a spokesperson and represent The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society for many years now.- Actor
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Born to a Cuban mother and a Persian father, Dar grew up on the outskirts of Washington, D.C. in Fairfax County, Virginia. Dar attended Arts Educational School in London, England where he studied both classical and modern theatre and graduated with an honors degree. Since gradating, Dar has worked on stage and onscreen with some heavyweight directors, including Ridley Scott and Stephen Frears. Dar is also a prolific voice actor, voicing many games (in English and Spanish), and since 2014 has been the predominant voice of Dove Men's products. In 2014 Dar was nominated for Best Supporting Actor Nominee in a short film at the 2014 Action On Film International Film Festival for his performance in the acclaimed short film, Warhol. For his work in video games, Dar was nominated for Best Supporting Performance in a Comedy at the 2018 NAVGTR Awards for his performance as Hawkeye in Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2. In 2022, Dar appeared in Amazon Prime's Ten Percent!, the U.K. version of the popular French comedy series Call My Agent.- Tehran Von Ghasri is known for Angels Fallen: Warriors of Peace, Fury of the Fist and the Golden Fleece (2018) and Social Industrial Meltdown (2022).
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Jonathan Aryan Jafari, known by his internet pseudonym JonTron, is an American comedian, reviewer, and internet personality. He reviews video games, movies, and television shows of varying genres in a retrospective and comedic manner in his YouTube web series JonTron. Jafari was co-creator and former co-host of the Let's Play webseries Game Grumps, and co-created the video game entertainment website Normal Boots. As of August 2019, his YouTube channel JonTronShow has 5.6 million subscribers and 829 million views.
In early 2017, Jafari faced backlash from media outlets and fans after making public comments on race and immigration. Jafari's comments were characterized by news commentators as aligning with far-right or alt-right politics. Shortly after the backlash to these statements, he stepped down as an active member of Normal Boots.- Andre Khabbazi was born on 15 January 1975 in Sacramento, California, USA. He is an actor, known for Circuit (2001), Days of Our Lives (1965) and The Young and the Restless (1973).
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Marnò was born in Los Angeles, and went to boarding school at Phillips Academy, in Andover, Massachusetts. She then received a BA in Comparative Literature from Barnard College, Columbia University and an MFA in Acting at the Yale School of Drama. She has received additional training at the Guthrie Theater in Minnesota and at the Public Theater's Shakespeare Lab in New York.
Marnò received rave reviews for the one-woman show "Nine Parts of Desire" in which she portrayed nine different Middle Eastern women which ran at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre and at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles.
Marnò has lived in France, Germany, Sweden and Argentina, and speaks english, French, German, Farsi, and Spanish.
She is also a playwright. Her first play, When the Lights Went Out, premiered at New York Stage & Film, starring Laura Innes, directed by Kate Whoriskey.
She is the voice of Mirabelle Ervine and Namira in the video game Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.- Actress
- Producer
Shiva Rose was born in Santa Monica, Los Angeles. An American of Irish and Iranian decent, she was raised in Iran until the age of ten when she and her family were forced to escape to Paris, then to Los Angeles.
She began her stage career at 15 at several theaters in Santa Monica. She attended UCLA and then married actor Dylan McDermott. While devoting her life as a mother to raise a daughter, she continued to act on stage, television and film.
She gained recognition for her starring role in the critically-acclaimed David and Layla which Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter described as "'A bold, politically relevant film against impossible odds." The film got theatrical distribution, followed by Time Warner's VOD and Digital Distribution. It continues to be distributed abroad.
David & Layla garnered Shiva Rose the "Best Breakthrough Actress" Award.
She continues her career in the theater as an actress and writer. She wrote Fragile Life based on the life of the photographer Tina Modotti.
She is active with several charitable organizations including being a spokesperson for Amnesty International Refugee Program.
Shiva Rose and Dylan McDermott divorced in 2009. She continues to write for various magazines (Vogue, Lucky) and online sites (eco-stilletto, Huffington Post). She maintains a life style website devoted to her organic holistic lifestyle called The Local Rose.
Currently (2011), she is the Executive Producer of a feature film 'Relative Insanity', starring Maggie Grace and Helen Hunt.
Shiva Rose lives with her two daughters in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, California.- Actor
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Peyman Maadi was born in 1972 in New York City to an Iranian couple. His father was a lawyer. His family moved back to Iran when he was 5 years old. He graduated in Metallurgical Engineering from Karaj Azad University. Maadi started his film career as a screenwriter in late 2000s. He is the writer of several famous Iranian films. He started his acting career in Asghar Farhadi's film About Elly (2009). Two years later, he received the Silver Bear award for Best Actor in Leading Role for his performance as Nader in Farhadi's A Separation (2011) from the Berlin International Film Festival.- Actor
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Oliver 'Ali' Nejad was born on 25 February 1978 in San Francisco, California, USA. He is an actor and producer, known for Triton Poker (2022), WPT Alpha8 (2014) and Success Driven (2012).- Actor
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Adrian Pasdar was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, to Rosemarie Pasdar (née Sbresny), who owns a travel agency, and Homayoon Pasdar, a prominent heart surgeon. His father is Iranian and his mother, who was born in Germany, is of German, and some Polish, descent. At the age of 2, his father moved the family to Powelton, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia. In high school, he excelled at football, eventually leading to a football scholarship at the University of Florida in 1983. Football may have been a promising future, had it not been for a terrible accident during his freshman year that left his face scarred and his legs badly injured. A very driven Adrian finished his freshman year in a wheelchair, doing intensive physical therapy and turning his attention to campus stage productions and rediscovered a childhood interest in writing and acting. No longer able to play football, he dropped out of school and returned home, taking a job with a theater group "People's Light and Theatre Company". Here, he worked on sound, lighting and set construction. While constructing a set, he cut off the end of his left thumb. Adrian, having the ability to turn tragedy into triumph, used his medical compensation to pay for attendance at the famous Lee Strasberg Theater Institute. At the age of 19, he auditioned for a role in Top Gun (1986). Director Tony Scott was so impressed that he wrote the part of "Chipper" just for him. This led to bigger roles in Solarbabies (1986), Streets of Gold (1986), and Kathryn Bigelow's 1987 cult vampire movie Near Dark (1987), with Adrian in the lead role of "Caleb Colton". He also appeared in Vital Signs (1990). Adrian has always been an actor ahead of his time, opting for roles in independent and cable movies long before they were considered fashionable for feature actors to do. In 1992, feeling completely out-of-touch with reality, Adrian left Hollywood to return to New York. He worked as a cashier for room and board, while taking the occasional small part, such as "Frankie" in Brian De Palma's Carlito's Way (1993). Another major break came in 1995, when Adrian was cast as the title character on the short-lived Fox series Profit (1996). He continues to act in supporting roles and has now added directing to his already impressive body of work. He wrote and directed the short film Beyond Belief (1999) and also directed a feature film entitled Cement (2000).- Actress
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Artemis Pebdani was born in Houston, Texas, USA. She is an actress and writer, known for It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (2005), Scandal (2012) and Big City Greens (2018).- Actor
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Sarah Shahi was born Aahoo Jahansouzshahi in Euless, Texas, to an Iranian father and Spanish-Iranian mother. She is a former NFL cheerleader and a descendant of a 19th-century Persian Shah. She attended Trinity High School and Southern Methodist University, studied opera and majored in English. As a teenager, she won several beauty contests and took first place in the Miss Fort Worth USA pageant in 1997. She joined the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders and was part of the 1999-2000 squad. She also appeared on the cover of their 2000 calendar.
While working as an extra on the set of Dr. T & the Women (2000), she met director Robert Altman, who encouraged her to move to Hollywood to pursue a career as an actress. Shahi was the first ghost in Supernatural (2005), the CW paranormal drama series. She had recurring roles in several TV series, such as Alias (2001), in which she played "Jenny"; and Dawson's Creek (1998), where she was "Sadia Shaw". She became a fan favorite in her role as the Mexican-American DJ "Carmen de la Pica Morales" in the Showtime series, The L Word (2004), which she joined in its second season. Sarah did not renew her contract with the show for a fourth season and, consequently, her character was written out.
However, she is best-known for her main role as "Sameen Shaw" on the CBS show Person of Interest (2011) playing a CIA agent turned-vigilante with a heart of gold.
She also appeared on HBO's The Sopranos (1999), in the episode Kennedy and Heidi (2007) as "Sonya Aragon", a stripper and a college student who spends a weekend with Tony after a death in his family. Although uncredited by most sources, Sarah also appeared in the Jackie Chan film, Rush Hour 3 (2007), as one of the girls being handcuffed along with Mia Tyler for a traffic offense by Chris Tucker early in the film. She also starred with Damian Lewis in the NBC show, Life (2007).
Sarah speaks English, Farsi, and some Spanish, and has a brown belt in karate.- Actress
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Yara Shahidi was born on 10 February 2000 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. She is an actress and producer, known for Salt (2010), Black-ish (2014) and Grown-ish (2018).