Shohreh Aghdashloo
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Shohreh Aghdashloo (born Shohreh Vaziri-Tabar on May 11, 1952, in Tehran, Iran) is an Iranian-American actress whose career spans theater, film, and television across multiple continents. She began performing in Iranian cinema in the early 1970s, earning national recognition for her work in films such as Abbas Kiarostami's The Report (1977), which received critics' prizes at the Moscow Film Festival. Following the Iranian Revolution in 1979, she emigrated first to England, where she earned a degree in international relations from Brunel University of London, and later to the United States.
Her American career gained widespread attention with her performance in House of Sand and Fog (2003), which earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. In 2008 she won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie for her portrayal of Sajida Talfah in HBO's House of Saddam. On television she is perhaps best known internationally as Admiral Chrisjen Avasarala on the science fiction series The Expanse (2015-2022) and as Dina Araz in the fourth season of 24.
In Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021), Aghdashloo provided the distinctive voice of Gozer the Gozerian, lending the ancient Sumerian deity a resonant and otherworldly presence. The performance was a three-way collaboration: Olivia Wilde portrayed Gozer's physical form on screen, Emma Portner performed the character's more unusual body movements and provided the "spirit form" performance, and Aghdashloo's voice tied both physical interpretations together. Director Jason Reitman reached out to Olivia Wilde via text message to invite her into the role. Wilde's own idea added more spikes to the Gozer costume, and Gozer's eyes were originally designed to be red but were changed to black in post-production for unknown reasons. In the original Ghostbusters (1984), the role of Gozer's voice had been played by Paddi Edwards; Aghdashloo's casting continued the tradition of using a voice artist distinct from the physical performer.
She published a memoir, The Alley of Love and Yellow Jasmines, in 2013, detailing her journey from Tehran to Hollywood.