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Navid Negahban

Navid
Negahban

Award-winning Actor  ·  Producer  ·  Director

Aladdin  ·  Homeland  ·  Legion  ·  The Night Agent
Showreel Contact

“Very dashing, with an old-fashioned matinee-idol air… the closest thing we have to the late Omar Sharif.”

— GQ Magazine

0Years
0Credits
0Continents
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“Far and away the highlight of the series. Let’s have more Navid Negahban in everything.”— IGN
“Navid once again transforms.”— Variety
“The greatest nuance comes from Negahban.”— Austin Chronicle
“All the psychopathic charm you could ask for in a villain.”— Paste Magazine
“A charismatic Navid Negahban.”— The New York Times
“Far and away the highlight of the series. Let’s have more Navid Negahban in everything.”— IGN
“Navid once again transforms.”— Variety
“The greatest nuance comes from Negahban.”— Austin Chronicle
“All the psychopathic charm you could ask for in a villain.”— Paste Magazine
“A charismatic Navid Negahban.”— The New York Times
Navid Negahban

Before I spoke my first line on an American screen, I crossed four borders, lived in a refugee camp, and learned that silence can say more than words.

That journey shaped not only my life, but the depth, empathy, and truth I bring to every role. That’s the short version.

The Long Version
Homeland
Abu Nazir
Showtime
2011–2013
Legion
Shadow King
FX / Marvel
2017–2019
Aladdin
The Sultan
Disney
2019
Curb Your Enthusiasm
Morsi
HBO
2017
12 Strong
General Dostum
Warner Bros.
2018
The Old Man
Faraz Hamzad
FX
2022–2024
The Night Agent
Abbas Mansuri
Netflix
2025
Ghosts of Beirut
Ali Reza Asgari
Showtime
2023

Showreel

Montage
30 clips — scroll or swipe trackpad or mouse wheel

Filmography

YearTitleRoleType
Recognition

Awards

1 BAFTA Nomination  ·  10 Wins  ·  18 Nominations

2025WINJIFF Japan Indies Film FestivalBest Short FilmThe Apple Tree
2021WINBari Under The Stars Film FestivalHonorable MentionLondon Arabia
2021WINAthens International Monthly Art Film FestivalHonorable MentionLondon Arabia
2020WINEuropean Cinematography AwardsBest ActorLondon Arabia
2020WINNew York Cinematography AwardsBest ActorLondon Arabia
2020WINCanadian Cinematography AwardsBest ActorLondon Arabia
2020WINNYC Indie Film AwardsPlatinum Award — Best Short FilmLondon Arabia
2018WINNew York Film AwardsHonorable Mention — Best Narrative FilmThe Divorce
2018WINBest Shorts CompetitionAward of Merit — Women FilmmakersThe Divorce
2015WINIsraeli Film Academy (Ophir Awards)Best Picture + 4 MoreBaba Joon (Exec. Producer)
2011WINNoor Iranian Film FestivalBest ActorLiberation
2021NOMPan African Film FestivalBest Narrative ShortLondon Arabia
2021NOMFerrara Film FestivalGolden Dragon — Best Short WorldLondon Arabia
2021NOMIndy Shorts International Film FestivalBest Short (Narrative)London Arabia
2021NOMFilmHaus: Berlin Film + New MediaBest Film, Best Lead Actor, Best Drama, Best Independent FilmLondon Arabia
2020NOMIndy Shorts International Film FestivalBest Short (Narrative)London Arabia
2019NOMLucky Strike Film FestivalBest Short FilmThe Divorce
2018NOMIdyllwild International Festival of CinemaGrand Jury Award — Best Ensemble Cast FeatureCarving A Life
2018NOMAmsterdam International Filmmaker FestivalBest FilmOsprey
2018NOMFilm Fest International, LondonBest FilmOsprey
2018NOMNice / Milan International Filmmaker FestivalBest FilmOsprey
2017NOMBAFTA Games AwardBest Performer1979 Revolution: Black Friday
2017NOMMadrid International Film FestivalBest FilmOsprey
2013NOMScreen Actors Guild (SAG)Outstanding Ensemble — Drama SeriesHomeland
Award-Winning Short Films

Short Films

Projects in Development

Writer · Director · Producer

Tosca Unveiled
In Development
Psychological Thriller

Tosca Unveiled

When a Tehran theater troupe stages an uncensored Tosca as an act of defiance, the boundary between stage and reality dissolves.

Adapted from Tosca Tehran by Shadi Ghaheri · WGA #2286697

Asher's Command
In Development
Drama · Inspired by True Events

Asher’s Command

Two men. Two worlds. Eighteen years of trust. A single command.

Adapted from the play by Marilyn Felt

Representation & Inquiries

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Tosca Unveiled

Written and Directed by Navid Negahban  ·  WGA #2286697  ·  Buff Draft 05/13/2025  ·  121 Pages  ·  Farsi / German / English Logline

When a Tehran theater troupe stages an uncensored Tosca as an act of defiance, the boundary between stage and reality dissolves as they discover they are the characters inside the tragedy written not by Puccini, but by the regime’s own enforcer.

Synopsis

The regime said yes to Tosca. On one condition: Tosca doesn’t kill Scarpia.

Director Vida Salehi agreed to every edit. Then spent six months rehearsing the real version in secret. Now it’s opening night at Tehran’s Vahdat Hall. International press. Foreign diplomats. A sold-out house. And walking through the lobby is the one man who could unravel everything: Akbar Askari, secret police, Ershad enforcer, and the man who left his marks on the body of Vida’s lead actress, Raha.

He isn’t here for the opera.

As the curtain rises, the company must hold together against their own fractures and a regime tightening around them in real time. Tosca’s story of tyranny, desire, and impossible sacrifice begins to mirror their night so precisely that the actors can no longer tell which script they’re following. Puccini’s, or the one being written for them in the dark.

Director’s Statement

Shadi Ghaheri is an Iranian, New York–based director who worked in Iran. She heard about a theater group in Mashhad — the city where I was born — who refused to perform at an international festival as retaliation against the regime for killing and imprisoning people in the streets. They were arrested. Their families were threatened. They were forced to perform. She wrote a play called Tosca Tehran and sent it to me. Because I am from Mashhad. Because she knew I would understand.

When I read it, I knew the stage couldn’t do it justice. This was too big for the theater. A story about art, tyranny, and what it costs to speak when silence is the price of survival. I bought the rights and wrote the screenplay. What I didn’t realize was that I wasn’t adapting someone else’s story. I was writing my own.

I have faced many Askaris in my life. Growing up in Iran, I was questioned, reprimanded, suspended from school for speaking up. Every time I defended another student against the Islamic moral student organization, I was punished. Not for what I said, but for the fact that I said anything at all. The characters in Tosca Unveiled are not abstractions to me. They are people I grew up with. People I trained with. People I may never see again.

When I was scouting locations in the Republic of Georgia, I found a theater I fell in love with. After the creative team read the script, they called me and said: “What you wrote is our story. One of our lead actors has been arrested for speaking against the government. We don’t know where he is.”

That is how Tosca connects Mashhad to Rome to Tbilisi. The uniforms change, but the gaze and the pressure remain dangerously current in each.

Tosca has been performed over one thousand times at the Metropolitan Opera alone, making it one of the most frequently staged operas in its 124-year history. Globally, it remains among the five most performed operas in the world. It has endured for more than a century because its subject is not historical. It is immediate. What happens when power desires not just your obedience, but your body, your art, your soul.

The Vision

I want this film to feel like one continuous journey. From the first frame to the last, the audience follows the actors through the theater: stage, backstage, green room, corridors. They cannot let go. One actor passes us to the next like a baton in a relay. By the end, everything feels like one unbroken shot. Not because it’s a technical stunt. Because there are no cuts in a crisis. There is no editing in fear.

On stage, the world is warm — the grandeur of Puccini’s Rome. Off stage, bare corridors, fluorescent light, a desert. The audience will feel the temperature change before they understand it. The Tosca sections will be performed in a Shakespearean Farsi, elevated and formal. The rest in modern Farsi, with German and English where the story demands it.

I have worked as an actor since 1987. Over 160 projects. I have been mentored by Jim Sheridan and Mike Nichols. After nearly four decades inside the craft, I know when an actor is performing and when they are being. That distinction is the entire point of this film.

I will play Askari not as a monster, but as proximity. The most frightening power is the one that stands close enough to whisper.

My plan is to rehearse the script the way you rehearse a play — not on a soundstage with marks and setups, but on the movie set itself, which is a theater. We use the entire space. We run the script from beginning to end with our director of photography attached, so that the DP lives inside the rhythm of the piece the way the actors do. Our dress rehearsal is the moment the DP tells us: I know where the cameras go.

Then we shoot. The cameras will be hidden from the actors and from the audience inside the film. The result should never look like you are watching a movie. It should feel like you are living it. I want my audience to think: Do I want to be here? What would I have done? Not a film you observe. A night you survive.

Mood

ON STAGE
Warm candlelight on stone. Voices filling a hall built for a thousand. The opera is beautiful and cruel. Power wears silk. Violence is orchestrated like music. Puccini’s Rome rendered in Shakespearean Farsi.

OFF STAGE
Cold. Bare. Fluorescent. Concrete corridors, loading docks, a green room that feels like a holding cell. The audience will feel the temperature change before they understand it. This is where Askari moves freely. The stage belongs to art. The corridors belong to power.

THE COLLAPSE
As the night progresses, the border between these two worlds dissolves. The warm stage and the cold backstage bleed into each other, until no one can tell which tragedy they are inside.

Full screenplay available upon request  ·  WGA #2286697  ·  Represented by Innovative Artists
Request the Full Screenplay →

Asher’s Command

Drama · Inspired by True Events · Written and Produced by Navid Negahban · Adapted from the play by Marilyn Felt Logline

When the friendship that outlasted everything finally meets the one thing it cannot survive, both men discover that loyalty is not what you feel. It is what you do when everything is at stake.

Synopsis

For eighteen years, Samir and Asher have built something rare. A bond of trust, loyalty, and a kinship neither of them was supposed to have.

But when their loyalty is put to the test, there is no escaping inherited history.

Words carry weight. Silence carries more.

As the pressure builds, both men are pushed to a point where choice is no longer theoretical. It is the only thing left.

Some connections survive history. Others are tested by it. Director’s Note

I was born in Mashhad, Iran, and grew up during a time shaped by revolution, war, and displacement. I left Iran and moved through Turkey and Bulgaria before ending up in a refugee camp in Ingelheim, Germany, where I applied for asylum. I had just turned twenty. In that camp, I listened. People shared what they had lost: homes, families, identity. Those stories stayed with me.

Years later, I came across Asher’s Command. In 2004 I directed it on stage while also playing Samir. It stayed with me. The film is inspired by real events, built from testimonies, interviews, and lived experiences. The story has been shaped into one narrative, but its emotional truth remains untouched.

For me, this is not about conflict. It is about closeness. How near we can come to each other, and how quickly that can be disrupted by history, fear, or inherited belief. I want to create a space where people can look, and maybe recognize something of themselves in someone they did not expect.

In Development  ·  Written and Produced by Navid Negahban  ·  Adapted from the play by Marilyn Felt  ·  Represented by Innovative Artists
Discuss This Project →

EPK

Electronic Press Kit — biography, credits, press highlights, and representation details.
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Press

What the world said about a man who made them root for the villain.

GQ
The New York Times
Hollywood Reporter
Vulture
IGN
Variety
The Homeland Years
The Atlantic
Washington Post
Rolling Stone Middle East PDF
Los Angeles Times PDF
Backstage
Indiewire
Aladdin & Global Recognition
CNET
Recent Highlights
Deadline New
Variety New

Interviews

Off camera, he is funnier, warmer, and more philosophical than any character he has played. After thirty years of crossing borders, he still finds the whole thing hilarious and his airport stories prove it.

Page Six · New York Post
"TV's Favorite Terrorist Is Actually a Goofball" — walks in and delivers classic villain movie lines at the camera. Genuinely funny.
Funny or Die · 2013
"How to Be a Terrorist… In Hollywood!" — a Funny or Die infomercial. Satirical gold.
Television
CNN
"Homeland Role Propels Actor to Fame" — CNN on how Abu Nazir became a household name
Breakfast Television Vancouver
BT Vancouver: Riaz talks with Navid Negahban — on Homeland, the journey, and life in Hollywood
AfterBuzz TV
Homeland After Show — Season 2 Episode 8, I'll Fly Away — breaking down the episode
Online & Digital
GoldDerby
"On playing America's most wanted man on Homeland" — GoldDerby video
Manoto Plus · May 2019
On Aladdin, Legion, and the gypsy journey — Manoto Plus interview
International
Sohu TV · Shanghai · June 2013
Homeland wins international award in Shanghai — acceptance speech
Read Article ↗
View PDF ↗ Download PDF ↓