PORTRAIT. She embodies freedom and love of play. Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani shone brightly artistically in 2024.
She is certainly the most famous Iranian actress… and the most in love with Paris. Exiled since 2000 for having filmed in a Hollywood blockbuster – “State Lies” by Ridley Scott – Golshifteh Farahani is a citizen of the world… who still has a preference for the French capital. “Paris is my city, it’s my life, it’s my love. When people complain about Paris, I tell them that you can't understand why Paris is extraordinary even when it's ugly like today. I love everything that everyone hates, I love it! I love the waiter who complains, the ladies who talk too loudly. », she confided to us in 2022, during the promotion of “A Romantic Comedy”.
Where is Golshifteh Farahani from?
Born Rahavard Farahani on July 10, 1983 in Tehran, Golshifteh Farahani comes from a family of artists. His father is the actor and theater director Behzad Farahani, his mother the actress and painter Fahimeh Rahimnia. Second name given by his father, Golshifteh means “flower-loving”. She is the youngest in the family: her sister Shaghayegh is also an actress while her brother Azarakhsh is a musician.
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It was music that was his first passion. A piano virtuoso, she could have become a concert pianist but it was acting that attracted her, theater and soon cinema. Golshifteh Farahani still likes to sing, dance, participate in the concerts of her friends – Coldplay in Argentina, Max Richter recently in Paris, when she herself does not play the Hang, a Swiss percussion instrument that she masters to perfection, notably in the film “My Sweet Pepper Land” by Hiner Saleem (2013).
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When did Golshifteh Farahani start acting?
At the age of 14, Golshifteh Farahani burst onto the screen in “The Pear Tree” (1997) by Iranian director Dariush Mehrjui, in which – a premonitory detail – she leaves her childhood sweetheart to follow her father to… Paris. She then moved on to projects in Iran, shooting under the direction of the greatest Persian filmmakers, from Mamad Haghighat (“Two Angels”, screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 2003), to Abbas Kiarostami (“Shirin”, 2008), including Bahman Ghobadi (“Half Moon”, which was censored in Iran and for which she received the Best Actress Award at the 2006 San Sebastián Festival) and Asghar Farhadi (“About Elly,” 2009).
Why did Golshifteh Farahani go into exile?
Freedom-loving, Golshifteh Farahani had already suffered an acid attack as a teenager. But it was his participation in the American film “State Lies” by Ridley Scott, alongside Leonardo DiCaprio, which aroused the anger of the regime. In August 2008, her passport was confiscated and the actress understood that she would not be able to lead her career and her life as she wanted if she returned to Tehran… Posing nude on the cover of the magazine “Égoïste” in 2015, Golshifteh Farahani supports the young Iranian generation who are rising up against the mullahs in line with the Femme Vie Liberté movement.
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“I have been living in exile for fifteen years. The generation born in the 80s experienced war and post-revolution repression. We are a finished, repressed generation. The 90s and 2000s generations have not seen the war, they are not a traumatized generation like ours. In 2009, young people rose up against the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In November 2019, the protests had already been bloodily repressed, with more than 1,000 dead. This youth is not afraid. These are our children. They are in the street. They are not ashamed of being shocking. I saw a young woman respond to a woman in a chador: “I want my life.” », she explained to us in September 2022.
What are the most notable films in Golshifteh Farahani's filmography?
She works on instinct and chooses her projects like love at first sight, stringing together big productions – a “Pirates of the Caribbean”, the blockbuster “Tyler Rake” for Netflix, “Exodus: Gods and Kings” by Ridley Scott – and more intimate films, notably in France under the direction of Christophe Honoré (“Les Misfortunes de Sophie”), Arnaud Desplechin (“Brother and Sister”) or Louis Garrel (“Les Deux amis”). But if we had to choose only three roles in her beautiful filmography, it would be that of the woman in “Syngué Sabour, pierre de patience” by Atiq Rahimi, for which she will be nominated for a César, of Laura in “Paterson” by Jim Jarmusch, so close to what she is, and finally that of Selma, a charming psychoanalyst who returns to Tunisia, in “Un Divan à Tunis” by Manele Labidi.
Who are the men in Golshifteh Farahani’s life?
Golshifteh Farahani does not like to expose her private life on social networks. We just know that she had two husbands from whom she divorced – the Franco-Iranian playwright Amin Mahdavi, brother of the decorator India Mahdavi, from 2003 to 2011, the French psychologist of Australian origin, Christos Dorje Walker, from 2015 to 2018. She also maintained a romantic relationship with the French actor and director Louis Garrel, with whom she filmed “Les Deux amis”, released in 2015.
