List of Famous people born in Tehran, Iran
Dara Khosrowshahi
Dara Khosrowshahi is an Iranian-American businessman and the chief executive officer of Uber. Khosrowshahi was previously CEO of Expedia Group, a company that owns several travel fare aggregators. He is also a member of the board of directors of BET.com, and Hotels.com, and previously served on the board of The New York Times Company.
Ramin Karimloo
Ramin Karimloo is an Iranian-Canadian actor, singer and composer recognised mainly for his work in London's West End. He has played the leading male roles in both of the West End's longest running musicals: the Phantom and Raoul, Vicomte de Chagny in The Phantom of the Opera, and Jean Valjean, Enjolras, and Marius Pontmercy in Les Misérables. He also originated the roles of Gleb in Anastasia and the Phantom in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Love Never Dies, which continues the story of Phantom. He's also known to many Phantom fans for playing the role of the Phantom during The Phantom of the Opera 25th Anniversary Performance at the Royal Albert Hall, which was shown live in movie theaters around the world in October 2011, appearing opposite Sierra Boggess and Hadley Fraser as Christine Daaé and Raoul de Chagny, respectively. He made his Broadway debut as Jean Valjean in the 2014 revival production of Les Misérables, for which he was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical. and can be heard as mega hunk Stavros in As The Curtain Rises, Broadway's first original podcast soap opera.
Abbas Kiarostami
Abbas Kiarostami was an Iranian film director, screenwriter, poet, photographer, and film producer. An active film-maker from 1970, Kiarostami had been involved in the production of over forty films, including shorts and documentaries. Kiarostami attained critical acclaim for directing the Koker trilogy (1987–1994), Close-Up (1990), The Wind Will Carry Us (1999), and Taste of Cherry (1997), which was awarded the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival that year. In later works, Certified Copy (2010) and Like Someone in Love (2012), he filmed for the first time outside Iran: in Italy and Japan, respectively. His films Where Is the Friend’s Home?, Close-Up, and The Wind Will Carry Us were ranked among the 100 best foreign films in a 2018 critics' poll by BBC Culture. Close-Up was also ranked one of the 50 greatest movies of all time in the famous decennial Sight & Sound poll conducted in 2012.
Sahar Tabar
Fatemeh Khishvand, known by her Instagram username of Sahar Tabar, is an Iranian influencer who rose to prominence in 2017 for her supposed use of cosmetic surgery in images of herself posted to Instagram. It was rumored that she had altered her face through as many as fifty plastic surgeries. Tabar was interviewed on Iranian national television in October 2019 after she was arrested on charges including blasphemy and illegally obtaining money. Tabar was sentenced to ten years imprisonment in December 2020.
Elnaaz Norouzi
Elnaaz Norouzi is an Iranian-German model and actress who mainly works in the Indian film industry. She is known for playing the role of Zoya Mirza in Sacred Games. She made her Hollywood debut with Gerard Butler in Kandahar, a movie by Ric Roman Waugh.
Shappi Khorsandi
Shaparak Khorsandi, formerly known as Shappi Khorsandi, is an Iranian-born British comedian and author. She is the daughter of the Iranian political satirist and poet Hadi Khorsandi. Her family left Iran for the United Kingdom following the Islamic Revolution.
Babak Zanjani
Babak Zanjani is an Iranian billionaire and business magnate. He was the managing director of the UAE-based Sorinet Group, one of Iran's largest business conglomerates. In late 2013, he was arrested and accused of withholding $2.7 billion of government money owned by the Ministry of Petroleum, in his attempts to facilitate Iran's oil revenue hindered by the sanctions against Iran. He was convicted of corruption, sentenced to death, and is currently awaiting execution.
Mohammad Mosaddegh
Mohammad Mosaddegh was an Iranian politician who served as the 35th Prime Minister of Iran, holding office from 1951 until 1953, when his government was overthrown in the 1953 Iranian coup d'état orchestrated by the United States' Central Intelligence Agency and the United Kingdom's MI6.
Neda Agha-Soltan
The shooting of Neda Agha-Soltan, which resulted in her death during the 2009 Iranian election protests, drew worldwide attention. Agha-Soltan, a student of philosophy, was participating in the protests with her music teacher, and was walking back to her car when she was fatally shot in the chest.
Nazanin Boniadi
Nazanin Boniadi is an English actress and human rights defender. Born in Iran and raised in London, she went to university in the United States, where she landed her first major acting role as Leyla Mir in the medical drama General Hospital (2007–2009) and its spin-off General Hospital: Night Shift (2007). Since then, she is best known for playing "Nora" in the hit TV series "How I Met Your Mother", Fara Sherazi in the Showtime spy thriller series Homeland (2013–2014), Esther in the historical drama film Ben-Hur (2016), Clare Quayle in the Starz sci-fi thriller series Counterpart (2017–2018), and Zahra Kashani in the action thriller film Hotel Mumbai (2018). Boniadi was an Amnesty International spokesperson from 2009 to 2015 and has been a board member of the Center for Human Rights in Iran since 2015.