Nazanin Boniadi

Nazanin Boniadi ( ; born 1980) is a British actress and activist.

Boniadi was born in 1980 in Tehran in the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution.

Less than a month after her birth, she and her parents left Iran and applied to become political refugees in London.

Boniadi attended an independent school in Hampstead, London.

As a young girl, she played violin and performed ballet.

Boniadi earned a bachelor's degree, with honours, in biological sciences from the University of California, Irvine (UCI).

At UCI, she won the Chang Pin-Chun Undergraduate Research Award for molecular research involving cancer treatment and heart transplant rejection.

Boniadi was also assistant editor-in-chief of MedTimes, UCI's undergraduate medical newspaper.

Boniadi changed her career path from science and started pursuing acting in 2006.

Her first major acting role was as Leyla Mir on the daytime drama General Hospital and its SOAPnet spin-off series General Hospital: Night Shift, making her the first contract actor to play a Middle Eastern character in American daytime television history.

She is also the first actress born in Iran to ever be on contract on an American soap opera.

Boniadi played supporting roles in several major Hollywood film productions, such as Charlie Wilson's War, Iron Man, and The Next Three Days.

Born in Tehran 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).

She was an Amnesty International spokesperson from 2009 to 2015 and served as a board member for the Center for Human Rights in Iran from October 2015 until February 2021.

Her focus has been on youth and women's rights.

In 2009, she studied a contemporary drama short course at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.

She was a spokesperson for Amnesty International USA (AIUSA), with a focus on the unjust conviction and treatment of Iranian youth, women and prisoners of conscience, from 2009 until 2015.

She has her own official blog page on the AIUSA website and continues to partner with them.

In 2009 Boniadi provided a voiceover to AIUSA's "Power of Words" public service announcement introduced by Morgan Freeman; campaigned with the organization for the International Violence Against Women Act (I-VAWA); served as a panellist and emcee for events related to Iranian rights, and spearheaded The Neda Project with AIUSA.

In December 2010, she initiated an Amnesty International petition for Iranian film directors Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof, who had been convicted of "propaganda against the state".

The petition generated more than 21,000 signatures, including prominent Hollywood directors and actors.

Since then, Boniadi has played Nora in the sitcom How I Met Your Mother (2011), Fara Sherazi in the spy thriller series Homeland (2013–2014), Esther in the historical drama film Ben-Hur (2016), Clare Quayle in the sci-fi thriller series Counterpart (2017–2018), Zahra Kashani in the action thriller film Hotel Mumbai (2018), and Bronwyn in the fantasy series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2022–present).

She played Nora, a love interest for Neil Patrick Harris' character Barney Stinson, on the sixth season of the hit CBS show How I Met Your Mother in 2011.

She reprised this role during the show's seventh and ninth seasons.

On 8 June 2011, she joined a delegation, led by Hollywood director Paul Haggis and AIUSA Executive Director Larry Cox, to deliver the petition to the Iran Mission to the United Nations in New York.

On 3 June 2011, Boniadi joined Sarah Shourd in a rolling hunger strike and wrote an article in support of the Free the Hikers campaign, pertaining to the imprisonment of Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal in Iran.

In August 2012 Boniadi starred opposite George Clooney in a Nespresso TV ad.

On 9 April 2012, Boniadi returned to her alma mater UCI in support of the Education Under Fire campaign, calling for an end to state sanctioned discrimination and persecution of Baháʼís in Iran.

Boniadi delivered the keynote closing remarks at the 2012 XX Factor, Amnesty International USA's annual town hall meeting on women's rights, in Washington, D.C.

In December 2012, Boniadi worked with Roxana Saberi to launch an Amnesty International petition and campaign to free wrongfully imprisoned filmmaker Behrouz Ghobadi, brother of acclaimed filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi, in Iran.

In May 2013, Boniadi joined the cast of Homeland season 3 as CIA analyst Fara Sherazi, and was promoted to a series regular for the show's fourth season.

Boniadi also appeared in an eight-episode arc on season 3 of Scandal as antagonist Adnan Salif.

She narrated the soundtrack to the 2014 Iranian documentary film, To Light a Candle, made by Maziar Bahari and focusing on the state sanctioned persecution of Baháʼís in Iran.

She portrayed Esther, the title character's wife, in the 2016 remake of Ben-Hur.

She starred with Dev Patel and Armie Hammer in the 2018 feature film Hotel Mumbai, a dramatisation of the 2008 Mumbai attacks, as British-Iranian heiress Zahra Kashani.

From 2018 to 2019, Boniadi received critical acclaim for portraying the series regular role of Clare Quayle in the Starz espionage drama Counterpart.

In early 2020, it was revealed that Boniadi had been cast in an undisclosed role in The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings of Power on Amazon Prime.

February 2022, it was announced she would be playing the character of Bronwyn, described as a single mother and healer.

Boniaidi has been involved in human rights activism, with a focus on youth and women's rights.

In 2020, she was appointed as an ambassador for Amnesty International UK, with a focus on women and Iran.