Ingénou in Exile: Iranian Actress a Star Everywhere But at Home

Golshifteh Farahani

SPIEGEL ONLINE INTERNATIONAL: Actress Golshifteh Farahani is well on her way to global fame as a Hollywood star. But her work has forced her into exile from her home country of Iran, where she believes she will never live again.

Anything actress Golshifteh Farahani does can become a political issue -- what she says, where she shoots her films, with whom she works, with whom she doesn't work, whether she wears a headscarf or not. Hardliners in Tehran could conceivably even take it as a provocation that Farahani chooses to meet SPIEGEL for an interview at the cafe in Paris' Hotel Amour -- a hotel that was once a brothel.

But for Farahani, freedom means no longer having to constantly consider how the things she does might be judged by the morality police in her homeland of Iran. Farahani, 30, is her country's most famous actress. She's known in the West for a role opposite Leonardo DiCaprio -- and for the way she's fallen from the favor of the Iranian regime. She has been living in exile in Paris for four years now, just a few streets away from the Hotel Amour, which these days is a popular meeting spot for locals and tourists alike, including Farahani, who is a regular here.

"I don't want to be a political figure," Farahani says. "I hope I'm not one." Then she relates stories of secret police interrogations in Tehran, of being offered a role that caused a brouhaha at the US State Department and of a career that in recent years has taken her around the globe -- to New York, Los Angeles, Berlin, Cannes, Venice and Morocco, but no longer to Tehran, where her parents live. Going there would be too risky.

Golshifteh Farahani looks like a model and speaks like a civil rights activist with nothing to lose -- eloquent and passionate in her nearly perfect English. She only wears a headscarf now when a role calls for it, for example in the film adaptation of "The Patience Stone," which came out this month in German cinemas after making the international festival circuit. » | Martin Wolf | Thursday, October 17, 2013

The Iranian Film Star Who Upset a Nation

THE PROVINCE: Golshifteh Farahani finds solace outside her home country

TORONTO — Golshifteh Farahani says her new movie can never been shown in Iran because of the theme — it’s about a Muslim woman revealing grievances about her marriage — and because of the fact that she is the star.

“Maybe if it was another actress ...” she begins, before saying, “No, no way. No way. There’s no way that they show it in a cinema.”

Farahani, 29, was the biggest star in Iran until she was banished from the country this year when she showed her breast in a French video. It was an ad promoting the Cesar Awards, and Farahani, who lives in Paris, was one of 30 young actors who took off an item of clothing to demonstrate how they bared their souls for their art. She slipped off the corner of her blouse.

The reaction was immediate: the Fars News Agency said the video showed the “hidden, disgusting face of cinema” and an official of the Islamic republic’s supreme court phoned her parents, who live in Tehran, and said her breasts would be cut off and given to them on a plate. » | Jay Stone, Postmedia News | Fridaay, September 14, 2012