TEHRAN: Homayoun Ershadi, the celebrated Iranian actor who transitioned from architecture to cinema and gained worldwide recognition for his role in Marc Forster’s The Kite Runner, passed away at 78.
According to Iran’s official news agency, IRNA, Ershadi died on November 11 after a prolonged battle with cancer.
His remarkable journey into acting began unexpectedly in 1997, when acclaimed filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami offered him a role in Taste of Cherry, a film that went on to win the Palme d’Or at Cannes. Ershadi often fondly recalled the moment he met Kiarostami at a traffic signal in Tehran, where the director tapped on his car window and said, “I want to make a film. Would you like to be in it?”
Born on March 26, 1947, in Isfahan, Ershadi was nearly 50 when that life-changing encounter occurred. He had spent much of the 1980s in Vancouver, working as an architect after moving there following the Islamic Revolution, before eventually returning to Iran.
His portrayal in Taste of Cherry, as a man seeking someone to bury him after his intended suicide, catapulted him into international prominence. Over the next three decades, Ershadi appeared in more than 90 films and TV productions.
He became widely known to global audiences for playing Baba, the dignified father in The Kite Runner, a story about two childhood friends from 1970s Kabul torn apart by political turmoil.
Ershadi’s other notable international projects included Alejandro Amenábar’s Agora (2009), Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty (2012), and Hassan Nazer’s Utopia (2015), which follows an Afghan woman’s journey to the UK for fertility treatment.
In Iran, his later works featured the female racing drama Lelah, the rural tale Mahoor, and The Hill of Kites, which is set to be released posthumously.
There were also reports suggesting that Ershadi had been cast in Terrence Malick’s long-anticipated film The Way of the Wind, though this was never officially confirmed.
