On the eve of the Iranian revolution in 1978, Shohreh Aghdashloo fled her home in a Mercedes-Benz convertible, on a 31-day marathon drive from Tehran to London. She left behind her husband and parents and never came back. Aghdashloo was a 25-year-old actress in Iran, where she could be condemned as a harlot, a blasphemer. Now, she is the nominee for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in House of Sand and Fog. And her role — the Iranian immigrant wife of Ben Kingsley living in California.‘‘Suddenly, I am the native girl who is a very good actress, who lived in Iran and left the country for higher education, and though living in the US, she is one of us, and we all hope she wins,’’ as Aghdashloo describes the press clippings from Tehran. ‘‘So now, they want to acknowledge me. Before? No name. Now? I’m in the Iranian newspapers, therefore I exist.’’At 51, she can afford to laugh the irony off. ‘‘I listened to a message the other night, from this old lady from Mashhad, a very religious city in Iran.how she is ‘praying to God you’re going to win the Oscar,’ ’’ Aghdashloo says.‘‘I am thinking of the irony, is that the word? Because here I am — portraying somebody’s face is forbidden — and I’m making love with Ben Kingsley in a movie! And here she is, in Iran, saying how each day she prays for my Oscar!’’If she does win the Oscar, Aghdashloo promises she will not turn her 45 seconds at the podium into a political polemic — ‘‘though there are 70 million Iranians who want to write that speech for me,’’ she says. ‘‘If I am lucky enough to be going up those stairs, it is Iran going up those stairs.’’ —LAT-WP
