Insight of an emigre, passion of an actress

After watching her performance as the downtrodden wife of a deposed Iranian colonel in “House of Sand and Fog,” meeting actress Shohreh Aghdashloo is testimony to the powerful alchemy of wardrobe, makeup and -- above all -- acting skills.

In the DreamWorks drama, the tragic travails of Nadi Behrani’s life are indelibly etched on her face, her posture, her demeanor. In striking contrast, from the moment Aghdashloo greets a visitor to her Calabasas home, she sparkles, even managing to remain upbeat when discussing the struggles embodied by her on-screen persona.

“All she had left was the pretense of an image,” Aghdashloo (pronounced Agh-DASH-loo) says of her character. Once afforded the prestige of being the wife of someone in the Shah’s inner circle, Nadi now has little else but the meticulously tailored designer clothes and opulent furnishings she brought with her to the U.S., none of which ever seems to fit in the house that stands as the central point of conflict in the story. “Nobody ever calls her, she doesn’t call anybody,” says Aghdashloo, 51. “She has nothing in her life but her husband and her children.”

“House of Sand and Fog,” which opens Friday in Los Angeles and New York, is based on the novel by Andre Dubus III and marks the directorial debut of Vadim Perelman, who co-wrote the screenplay with Shawn Otto. Having fled Iran, Massoud Amir Behrani (Ben Kingsley), once a decorated colonel in the Shah’s army, has been reduced to holding down a number of menial jobs to support his family. Determined to maintain at least the facade of middle-class respectability, he leaps at the chance to buy a house that is sold at auction for nonpayment of back taxes.

But the original owner (Jennifer Connelly) is equally resolute about reclaiming the home she believes was unjustly taken from her. The legal and personal chasm that opens between the two sets the stage for emotional tumult and tragedy, with Aghdashloo’s character trapped in the middle of the maelstrom, helpless to do anything because of cultural restrictions on her behavior and her inability to understand the ways and means of life in America.

There’s not much at all in the way of levity in “House of Sand and Fog,” which begins in darkness punctuated only by the light flashing atop a police squad car. If Nadi ever smiles, it is a halfhearted gesture weighted down by the despair that seems to inform every element of her life. It was vitally important to Aghdashloo that Nadi be portrayed in a three-dimensional fashion, even if it meant staying in character when the cameras had stopped rolling.

“I decided to wear her shoes, wear her clothes, live her life,” she explains. To this end, although the film was shot not far from where she lives, Aghdashloo elected to spend all week on location, returning home to her family just for weekend visits. “The only thing that made me feel better was that I was paying my dues to women like Nadi,” Aghdashloo says. “I knew this character wholeheartedly.”

That devotion paid off; Aghdashloo’s performance was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for best supporting actress.

American culture in Iran

Like Nadi Behrani, Aghdashloo also left Iran in the wake of the fundamentalist Islamic uprising. But any similarity ends there. Raised in a well-to-do family, Aghdashloo grew up enamored of American culture, which was first being introduced in Iran during her childhood. “All the stuff like Elvis Presley, Coca-Cola, hamburgers and especially American movies evoke fond memories. Since I was 8 years old, I dreamed of becoming an actress.”

Certain her parents would disapprove, Aghdashloo took an unusual approach to following her heart’s desire: She got married at age 19, then, free of family constraints, joined the Drama Workshop of Tehran. She trained first on the stage and soon began appearing in movies. By the mid-1970s, Aghdashloo had starred in four films and more were on the horizon. “I was at the peak of my career when the revolution came. I was young, but I could sense what was going on,” she reflects.

In 1978, then, just a few months before the Shah was dethroned and Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran, Aghdashloo decided to leave Iran, even though it meant turning her back on the work she loved, and ending her marriage, because her husband chose to remain in Iran.

By this time, the airports had been closed by the Shah’s crumbling regime in a futile attempt to keep Khomeini out of the country. “We all thought, ‘That’s it, we won’t be able to get out,’ ” she recalls. “But then it occurred to me that there was another way -- to drive.” And so Aghdashloo and two friends set out on a circuitous, monthlong odyssey from Tehran to London.

In London, Aghdashloo put her acting on hold, obtained a student visa and went back to school, where she studied politics. Then, in 1984, “a director friend of mine called and told me he had written a play with a lead role for me. The actress part of me had been in hiding all those years, but it kept telling me, ‘go, go, go, go, see what it is.’ ” As soon as she read the play, Aghdashloo called her friend, asking, “when do you want me to start?”

After a successful run in England, where Iranian emigres flocked to hear the Farsi-language play, the troupe brought the production to several U.S. cities. Not long after arriving in Los Angeles, Aghdashloo met Iranian playwright Houshang Touzie, who had settled here. The two hardly had the chance to get to know each other when it was time for Aghdashloo to return to London.

A few days later, she received a greeting card from Touzie. “I opened it, and it said, ‘come and join me. I love you, I want to marry you.’ ”

Drama Workshop ’79

Aghdashloo found herself faced with the prospect of starting her life anew -- and once again she followed her instincts. “I sold whatever I had, bought a ticket and came here.” The couple married in 1987 and have a 15-year-old daughter.

When speaking of her adopted homeland, Aghdashloo exhibits the kind of unabashed affection for America. As soon as she arrived, she says, “I felt at home. It was like a piece of a puzzle that’s been lost, and now it was back to make the whole picture.”

Co-starring in a big Hollywood movie is certainly the fantasy vision of many an American girl. However, when Aghdashloo says that by appearing in “House of Sand and Fog,” “I have achieved my American Dream,” the earnestness in her voice adds a deeper layer of resonance to a statement that might otherwise sound like a cliche. Before working on “House of Sand and Fog,” Aghdashloo appeared in several independent English-language films (“Surviving Paradise,” “Twenty Bucks”). She claims that one reason she has not been in more mainstream films is because “I kept refusing to play a terrorist.”

She has focused her creative efforts instead on the theater company she and her husband formed. Devoted to producing works in Farsi -- L.A. is home to one-third of this country’s 200,000-plus Iranian immigrants -- Drama Workshop ’79 is named for the studio in Iran where Aghdashloo’s career got its start. Touzie has completed a new play, which he hopes to stage early next year, once an appropriate venue has been located. The actress is hopeful that the release of “House of Sand and Fog” will be the first step in changing the way popular culture depicts Middle Eastern characters. She offers high praise for novelist Dubus’ portrayal of the Behrani family.

“I was fascinated by his observations,” Aghdashloo says. “I thought, ‘He’s not Iranian, how could he know these things?’ ” (Dubus has said that the father of a college friend had been an Army officer in Iran.) “I was amazed by his insights about Iranian traditions. At the same time I was thinking, if one day they make a movie out of this, I could play Nadi. I was born to play Nadi.”