Narges Rashidi

Narges Rashidi was born in 1980^[1] in Khorramabad, Iran.^[2] Her father was an army colonel and her mother is a housewife.^[1] She lived in Tehran at the time of the Iran–Iraq War.^[2][3]

Rashidi moved with her family to Turkey and then Germany when she was seven.^[2] She grew up in Bad Hersfeld in Germany.^[4] She was introduced to acting by the summer theatre festivals in the town.^[5]

Rashidi has appeared in many independent films and television productions,^[3] starting with the experimental film Venussian Tabutasco by Daryush Shokof in 2004.

Rashidi received international recognition and widespread acclaim for her starring role in the 2016 film Under the Shadow by Babak Anvari, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Variety cited her as "a favorite breakthrough performance" at Sundance. The magazine hailed her "intense yet fine-grained work... as a fiercely intelligent, progressive-minded Iranian woman infuriated by the direction of her country since the Islamic Revolution," noting, "Rashidi plays her character like a musical instrument going slowly out of tune; it's a performance rich in both motherly love and scream-queen abandon."^[6]

Rashidi plays Lale in the 2020 British TV series Gangs of London.^[7]

Rashidi was cast in the 2025 BBC fact-based drama miniseries Prisoner 951 as British-Iranian citizen Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was detained in Iran for six years. Joseph Fiennes played her husband, Richard Ratcliffe.^[8][9]

Rashidi speaks Persian, German, and English.^[4]

She married Christian Straka, a former professional tennis player.^[1] In 2016 she was living in Los Angeles.^[2]