Hi everyone and thank you for joining us for the 486th episode of the Hollywood Reporter's

Awards Chatter Podcast.

I'm the host Scott Feinberg and for those of you tuning in, we are recording this episode

in front of an audience at the Ray Kertzmann Theatre at CAA, the Hollywood talent agency

that has long represented my guest, following a screening of Muhammad Reza Azlani's 1976

film, Chess of the Wind, in which this actress made her big screen debut.

The recent rediscovery and restoration of this long-lost film, which the Criterion collection

describes as a jewel of Iranian cinema and one of the most astonishing works of the country's

pre-revolutionary new wave, has provided us all with the perfect reason to pause and

celebrate a true trailblazer who has been doing great work on the stage and screens big

and small for a half century, stunning people of all backgrounds with her incomparable

voice, beauty and above all talent.

To cite just a few of her accomplishments, she was nominated for an Oscar for her performance

in 2003's House of Sand and Fog, making her the first Iranian or Middle Eastern actress

ever to be up for that honor.

She reached millions of TV viewers with her unforgettable turn on the fourth season of

the hit Fox Drama Series 24 in 2005, and she won an Emmy for her work on the 2008 limited

series, House of Saddam.

For those reasons and many others, she is widely regarded as the greatest Iranian actress

of all time and one of the greatest actresses of all time, period, and at the age of 70,

she is going as strong as ever.

I first met, interviewed, and was enchanted by her 15 years ago at the Toronto International

...