Golshifteh Farahani

Some Lesser Known Facts About Golshifteh Farahani 

• Golshifteh Farahani is a well-known Iranian actress, singer, and musician.

• At the age of 5, she started learning music and playing the piano. Later, she joined a music school in Tehran, Iran.

  

• In an interview, she shared that she had lived like a boy when she was a kid, she said,

I had a name for myself: Ameer. Every day I went to school with the scarf, came back and changed into a boy, and went out on the streets to play basketball and live like a boy. My whole life for me was this game. It was dangerous. Had they caught me, it would have been truly serious. My parents were really worried but they couldn’t control me. The funny thing is the one big reason I gave was that I wanted to ride a bicycle without getting whistled or stared at. I wanted to become invisible. I wanted to be looked at as a human being rather than as an object of desire.”

• She has acted in the films, like ‘Deux fereshté/Two Angels’ (2003), ‘Bab’Aziz: Le prince qui contemplait son âme’ (2004), ‘To Each His Cinema’ (2007), ‘Santouri/The Music Man’ (2007), ‘Body of Lies’ (2008), ‘Chicken With Plums/Poulet Aux Prunes’ (2011), ‘The Patience Stone’ (2012), and ‘Arab Blues’ (2019).

• She came into the eyes of media after appearing in the Hollywood film, ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales’ (2017); as Shansa.

• She appeared in the Netflix web series, ‘Extraction’ (2020), in which she played the character of Nik Khan.

• She is a theatre artist too and has acted in various theatre plays, including ‘Maryam and Mardavij’ (2003), ‘The Black Narcissus’ (2004), ‘A Private Dream’ (2013), and ‘Anna Karenina’ (2016).

• She has also featured in the music videos, like “Pola” (2014) and “Paradis” (2018).

• She was exiled from her country, Iran, in 2008, and later, settled in Paris. In an interview, she said,

I was told by a ministry of culture and Islamic guide official that Iran does not need any actors or artists. You may offer your artistic services somewhere else.”

• She is actively working for environmental causes, and she strongly advocates for the eradication of tuberculosis in Iran.

• She has featured on the cover of various renowned magazines.

  

• She joined Kooch Neshin (Nomads), a band that won the 2nd Tehran Avenue underground rock competition while she was in Iran.

• She teamed up with Mohsen Namjoo; an exiled Iranian musician, and together they released an album ‘Oywas’ in October 2009.

• She was appointed as a member of the international jury at the 63rd Locarno Film Festival (2010).

• In 2014, she stood 6th in the annual Independent Critics Beauty List.