Best Shohreh Aghdashloo Movies, Ranked (2024)

Shohreh Aghdashloo is a pioneer for Iranian representation in American television and film; born in Iran, she was left with the onset of the Iranian revolution and originally settled in England. As an Iranian citizen, she had already dabbled in acting with Iranian cinema and plays, and continued her career when she moved abroad, despite pursuing her education in international relations. Her first American film appearance happened in 1989, but she didn’t have her major breakthrough until she was cast in the film House of Sand and Fog, which came out in 2003.

Aghdashloo landed an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her role in House of Sand of Fog, which then got her more casting opportunities in the future. However, Agdashloo landed in a trap that many BIPOC actors pioneering in terms of diversity run into: she was sometimes cast in roles that played into the stereotypes that many Middle Easterners, especially Iranians, face. Despite her age and ethnicity, Agdashloo, who found success later in her career, has continued to appear in films and television in Hollywood, paving the path for more Middle Easterners and Iranians to be depicted on-screen and tell Iranian stories. These are her best movies so far.

12 The Lake House

Best Shohreh Aghdashloo Movies, Ranked (1)

The Lake House came out in 2006 and is a remake of the South Korean movieIl Mare. Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves star in the film. In the film, Bullock portrays a doctor who rents a lake house outside of Chicago, and when she leaves a note in the mailbox for the next tenant, an architect discovers the note. But there’s a twist: he finds out about the letter in 2004, when the doctor wrote that letter in 2006. They then begin communicating through letters in the mailbox despite the gap in years between them.

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11 The Exorcism of Emily Rose

Best Shohreh Aghdashloo Movies, Ranked (2)

Released in 2005, The Exorcism of Emily Rose takes on an unusual subject. Its protagonist, Erin Bruner, is a lawyer who wants to go higher in her career. She wants to become a senior partner at the law firm where she works, and her next case is a Catholic priest who has been charged with a homicide after a botched exorcism against a nineteen-year-old named Emily Rose. The trial reveals the details behind what led to the exorcism against the teenager; the film is based on a real case that happened. Aghdashloo appears in the film briefly as a doctor.

10 Renfield

In Renfield, the assistant for Count Dracula, Renfield, decides he wants to change his profession. No longer does he want to deal with being Dracula’s wrangler for food, and when he finds a self-help group, he enrolls himself in it to try and find the people who are abusive to their partners. He thinks he can feed these people to Dracula without feeling guilty, but when an assassin comes onto him, he finds himself crossing paths with a female police officer who might be the key towards helping him change his fate. Aghdashloo portrays a mob boss who is the mother of Tedward.

9 House of Sand and Fog

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House of Sand and Fog was the movie that put Aghdashloo on the bigger map of the movie world, and her performance in the film is spectacular. A recovering addict, Kathy, lives alone after being abandoned by her husband. When she is forcibly evicted from her home, the Sheriff’s Deputy helps her move and find the proper methods to legally represent herself and get her home back. At the same time, a former member of the Iranian Army lives in the Bay Area with his family, now exiled from his homeland. He tries to support his family while keeping their pride, and he is the one who bought Kathy’s house. Soon, their stories collide.

8 The Nativity Story

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A biblical drama, The Nativity Story stars many big names, including Oscar Isaac, Ciaran Hinds, and Shohreh Aghdashloo, among others. Directed by Catherine Hardwicke, the film opens Rome, where the Massacre of the Innocents happens in the nativity story. It begins a year before the events of the massacre happen, and traces the birth of Jesus and how the events to come actually end up happening. The film was moderately successful worldwide upon its release.

7 A Simple Wedding

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2018’s A Simple Wedding is one of the few movies catered towards Iranian Americans. Directed by Sara Zandieh, the main character is a woman named Nousha Hassani. She lives her dream life, and is a housing attorney in Los Angeles who has not been married yet, much to the chagrin of her parents. They want to find her a husband they approve of, so they end up trying to set her up with various Iranian men of their choosing, despite this not being what she wants in the end. But when she meets someone she really likes on her own, she begins to worry what her parents will think.

6 Rosewater

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Jon Stewart’s Rosewater is based on the popular memoir by Maziar Bahari. Originally set in 2009, Rosewater tells the story of how Bahari returned to Iran as a journalist. When he arrives, he ends up being detained by the government because of his coverage of protests against the Iranian presidential election that year. His case also isn’t helped when he gave an interview with The Daily Show that doesn’t land him any less scrutiny. Bahari is imprisoned in the notorious Evin Prison in Iran, where he is often brutally tortured in his 118 days in jail.

Related: Kiumars Pourahmad: 13 Best Movies from the Iranian Director

5 Surviving Paradise

Best Shohreh Aghdashloo Movies, Ranked (8)

Surviving Paradise came out in 2001, and it is said to have been the first Iranian American film made in English to come out. It was directed and written by Kamshad Kooshan, and some may even dare to say it was the first film that really brought Shohreh Aghdashloo to people’s attention originally, as it was one of her first bigger releases in the United States. In the film, a ten-year-old and his sister have just immigrated to Los Angeles with their mother. When their mother is kidnapped by gangsters, they end up trying to go out on the streets of LA to find out what happened to her themselves.

4 The Cuban

Best Shohreh Aghdashloo Movies, Ranked (9)

The Canadian movie The Cuban, directed by Sergio Navaretta, shows how barriers can be overcome even in the most difficult of circumstances. Mina (Ana Golja) is an Afghan medical student who works at a nursing home. Her aunt manages the nursing home (Aghdashloo), and she helps out despite her workload and general disillusionment. There, she has a life-changing experience when she meets an elderly Cuban man, Luis. He was a former jazz musician, but now he has dementia, and with the right care, he can find the fragments of his old self.

3 Ghostbusters: Afterlife

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Ghostbusters: Afterlife came out in 2021, adding another installment to the Ghostbusters franchise. In this edition, set in Oklahoma, an entity is caught in a mine and another lured to Egon Spengler’s farm. But when things go wrong, he ends up dead and his daughter has to move to the farm with her children. When the daughter’s daughter finds out the farmhouse is haunted and discovers the ghost trap, tampering with it leads to a ghost getting to. This leads to an unfortunate set of circumstances where they need to save the town because of it.

2 X-Men: The Last Stand

Best Shohreh Aghdashloo Movies, Ranked (11)

X-Men: The Last Stand was released in theaters in 2006, and was the third installment in the X-Men franchise. Worthington Labs has just announced they have found a way to suppress the X-gene that gives mutants the possibility to cure their mutant genes. While some mutants show some interest in it, others are very wary about what this may cause, saying that it might be an attempt to try and get rid of the mutants once and for all. With this divide now in place, this inevitably leads to conflict not only between mutants and humans, but each other as well.

1 Run Sweetheart Run

Best Shohreh Aghdashloo Movies, Ranked (12)

A supernatural horror that had its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival before being picked up by Amazon, Run Sweetheart Run finds its protagonist in Cherie. She’s a single mother studying law, and she has a secretary gig at a law firm to try and pay the bills. But when she gets a weird call from her boss, she has to attend a dinner for him. When she meets the client and ends up being attacked by him after having been invited to spend the night at his home, things get weirder. The police arrest her instead, and it turns out the client has more power than expected and is going to hunt her down.

Best Shohreh Aghdashloo Movies, Ranked (2024)

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