Early life
Aghdashloo grew up in Tehran and developed a passion for performance in her teens. She made her stage debut at age 19 in a production of The Narrow Road to the Deep North (1973), a work by the Japanese playwright Matsuo Basho.1 Her film debut came with Chess of the Wind (1976), and she quickly became one of Iranian cinema's most prominent actresses.1 The Report (1977), directed by Abbas Kiarostami, won the Critics Prize at the Moscow Film Festival, cementing her reputation. Her subsequent performance in Sooteh-Delan (Desiderium, 1978), directed by Ali Hatami, deepened her standing as a lead of the Iranian screen.1
Following the Iranian Revolution in 1979, she left Iran and settled in England, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in International Relations from Brunel University of London.1 She later relocated to the United States, eventually becoming a naturalized American citizen. She settled in Los Angeles in 1987.1
Career
Early American work
After arriving in Los Angeles, Aghdashloo worked steadily in supporting television and film roles through the late 1980s and 1990s while building a foothold in the American industry. Her breakthrough came with the feature film House of Sand and Fog (2003), in which she played Nadi Behrani opposite Sir Ben Kingsley. The performance earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress, making her the first actress of Iranian origin to receive that distinction. She also won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Female for the same role.1
2000s
The Academy recognition opened prominent doors. In 2005 she played Dina Araz, a sleeper-cell operative, in the fourth season of 24, a role that attracted attention for its nuance and moral complexity. That same year she appeared in The Exorcism of Emily Rose. In 2006 she lent her voice to Dr. Kavita Rao in X-Men: The Last Stand and appeared in the biblical drama The Nativity Story.1
Her most celebrated television performance of the decade came in HBO's House of Saddam (2008), where she portrayed Sajida Talfah, the wife of Saddam Hussein. The role earned her the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie.1 She also received a Satellite Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture for The Stoning of Soraya M. (2008).1
2010s
Aghdashloo appeared in The Odd Life of Timothy Green (2013) and Star Trek Beyond (2016). Her most sustained role of the decade was Chrisjen Avasarala on Amazon Prime Video's science fiction series The Expanse, which ran from 2015 to 2022. Originally written as a much older character who rarely appeared on screen, the role grew into one of the show's central performances across all six seasons, earning Aghdashloo a devoted following in the science fiction community.1
Her voice work also expanded significantly during this period. She voiced Admiral Shala'Raan vas Tonbay (known informally as "Admiral Raan") in Mass Effect 2 (2010) and Mass Effect 3 (2012), becoming a recognizable presence in that franchise. She also appeared in Destiny (2014) and Destiny 2 (2017), voicing Commander Zavala's antagonist the Queen of the Reef (Mara Sov) and related characters. In the first season of the Netflix animated series Arcane she voiced Grayson, a Piltover enforcer.3
2020s
In the years following The Expanse, Aghdashloo continued to work across multiple formats. She voiced the unnamed dragon in Netflix's Damsel (2024) alongside Millie Bobby Brown, appeared in The Penguin (2024, Max) and Creature Commandos (2024, Max) within the DC Universe, and voiced Roshan, a senior Assassin's Brotherhood mentor, in Assassin's Creed Mirage (2023).3 In 2025 she joined the third season of Amazon Prime Video's The Wheel of Time as Elaida do Avriny a'Roihan, a recurring antagonist of that adaptation's final season.4
Ghostbusters
Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)
In Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Gozer the Gozerian returns as the film's primary supernatural antagonist, reappearing in Summerville, Oklahoma, decades after the original encounter in New York City. The character was brought to life through a three-way performer collaboration: Olivia Wilde provided Gozer's physical appearance on screen; Emma Portner, a professional dancer, performed the character's more unusual and contorted body movements and embodied the spirit-form sequences; and Aghdashloo supplied the voice.2 This structure gave Gozer a vocal presence distinct from its physical form, deliberately evoking the uncanny quality the character had in the original film.
Director Jason Reitman approached Wilde for the physical role via text message, and Wilde accepted.5 Wilde herself proposed additions to the Gozer costume, including more pronounced spikes in the character's design. The character's eyes were originally intended to be red, but were changed to black in post-production for undisclosed reasons.
In the original Ghostbusters (1984), the voice of Gozer had been supplied by Paddi Edwards,6 continuing the franchise tradition of separating the vocal and physical performances of the character. Aghdashloo's casting honored that convention and brought her notably resonant and distinctive voice to one of the franchise's most iconic roles.
Personal life
In 1987 Aghdashloo married Iranian-American actor and playwright Houshang Touzie.1 The couple have one daughter, Tara Touzie, born in 1989.1 Aghdashloo has been a consistent public advocate for human rights in Iran and for awareness of the persecution of the Baháʼí community. She published a memoir, The Alley of Love and Yellow Jasmines, in 2013, recounting her journey from Tehran to Hollywood.7
References
Some content on this page was researched using the Ghostbusters Wiki on Fandom.
-
"Shohreh Aghdashloo," Wikipedia, accessed 2026-06-13, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shohreh_Aghdashloo.
-
Ghostbusters News, "Ghostbusters: Afterlife's Gozer the Gozerian Was Played by Three Actresses" (December 31, 2021), https://ghostbustersnews.com/2021/12/31/ghostbusters-afterlifes-gozer-the-gozerian-was-played-by-three-actresses/.
-
"Shohreh Aghdashloo," IMDb, accessed 2026-06-13, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0013037/.
-
Variety, "Shohreh Aghdashloo Joins 'The Wheel of Time' Season 3" (December 11, 2024), https://variety.com/2024/tv/news/wheel-of-time-season-3-cast-shohreh-aghdashloo-1236245090/.
-
Ghostbusters News, "Olivia Wilde Accepted Her Ghostbusters: Afterlife Role Through a Text Message" (May 17, 2022), https://ghostbustersnews.com/2022/05/17/olivia-wilde-accepted-her-role-in-ghostbusters-afterlife-through-a-text-message/. Jason Reitman: "I reached out to her like, 'Hey, you wanna be Gozer?' I texted her, and she was down from the word 'go.'"
-
Spook Central, "Making Ghostbusters Trivia," https://www.spookcentral.tk/sclib/making-ghostbusters-trivia. "Due to the actress' Slavic accent, the voice of Gozer was dubbed by Paddi Edwards."
-
Aghdashloo, Shohreh (2013). The Alley of Love and Yellow Jasmines. HarperCollins, New York NY USA. ISBN 9780062009807.
