Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#1245
of 909177 performers
Top 1%
Shohreh Aghdashloo works on versatility rather than volume, and the catalogue keeps proving that the quieter choice was the correct one.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Shohreh Aghdashloo appears in 17 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Shohreh. Ghostbusters: Afterlife is the clearest case: a film rated 7.3 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, quiet performance. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for romance, action, fantasy. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, Jason Reitman, Justin Lin and others, Shohreh Aghdashloo helped set a standard other performers now audition against. Awards bodies have been slower than the work, which is usually the sign of a career built on choices rather than campaigns.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021) as Gozer (voice) · House of Sand and Fog (2003) as Nadi · Royally Screwed (2026) as Queen Lenora
Career snapshot
Ranked #1245 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
17
2003–2026
Career length
23 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.3
Ghostbusters: Afterlife
Average Nutevio score
6.2
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.3
Ghostbusters: Afterlife
Most frequent director
Juan Carlos Fresnadillo
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Juan Carlos Fresnadillo
Most common genre
Drama
8 titles
Average runtime
1h 49m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.8
out of 10
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio metric
Cultural impact and legacy, measured separately from craft — how far the work travelled once it left the cinema.
Nutevio Influence Score
6.4
out of 10
A quieter influence — felt inside the films rather than across the industry.
How far the work travelled past the people who saw it first.
What survives once the release-week conversation has burned off.
Institutional acknowledgement, weighted but never decisive.
Years of chosen, relevant work rather than years merely employed.
Statuettes, read as evidence rather than verdict.
Roles named without needing the film named alongside them.
Directors who wrote parts because this performer existed.
The reading other performers now have to answer.
Actor DNA
A fingerprint derived from the roles themselves — register, range and the kind of film they carry.
The shape of a career
Every performance plotted in time. Hover a point to read the title behind it.
Peak years
Where the scores, the awards and the sheer volume of work agree with each other.
Best decade
2000s
6.5 average MV
The 2000s are where the work and the material meet. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, X-Men: The Last Stand, The Lake House — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
2000s
6.5
Across 6 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
2000s
6.5
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
2000s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, X-Men: The Last Stand, The Lake House.
Most productive era
2000s
6 films
The busiest stretch of the catalogue — volume that reads as appetite rather than availability.
Range, mapped
Genres down the side, decades across the top. Warmer cells mean stronger titles.
| Genre | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.55 films | 4.72 films | 5.11 film |
| Action | 6.51 film | 6.62 films | 7.01 film |
| Thriller | — | — | 5.51 film |
| Comedy | 5.72 films | — | 6.82 films |
| Romance | 7.01 film | 6.91 film | 7.01 film |
| Horror | — | — | 6.02 films |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Nadi.
Highest rated performance
7.3 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer.
Career peak · Most recent film
2026Royally Screwed
Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once. The current state of the argument, as Queen Lenora.
Our order
Every performance in the catalogue, ordered by Nutevio Score.
Every title
Filter by genre or decade, and compare any two titles side by side.
17 of 17 films
as Queen Lenora
Directed by Unknown
as Gozer (voice)
Directed by Jason Reitman
as Marta Boghosian
Directed by Terry George
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
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The defining work
#1
Queen Lenora
Royally Screwed (2026)
Performance score7.4
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Queen Lenora gives Shohreh Aghdashloo a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Nadi
House of Sand and Fog (2003)
Performance score7.3
House of Sand and Fog asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Nadi is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Gozer (voice)
Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)
Performance score7.2
Ghostbusters: Afterlife asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Gozer (voice) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Marta Boghosian
The Promise (2016)
Performance score7.1
The Promise asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Marta Boghosian is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
as Queen Lenora
Start here. Royally Screwed is the clearest statement of what Shohreh Aghdashloo does — accessible, 116 minutes, and rated 7.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Shohreh at the most legible performance, then move forward in time so each film reads as a response to the one before it rather than a repetition of it.
House of Sand and Fog (2003)
Same director as Royally Screwed, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
The Nativity Story (2006)
Keeps the drama register of House of Sand and Fog but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Promise (2016)
Keeps the drama register of The Nativity Story but asks for a colder reading of it.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)
A deliberate change of key after The Promise — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Paul Weitz
Director
1 film together
Notably American Dreamz
Catherine Hardwicke
Director
1 film together
Notably The Nativity Story
Brett Ratner
Director
1 film together
Notably X-Men: The Last Stand
Sanaa Hamri
Director
1 film together
Notably The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2
Thor Freudenthal
Director
1 film together
Notably Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters
Terry George
Director
1 film together
Notably The Promise
Justin Lin
Director
1 film together
Notably Star Trek Beyond
Jason Reitman
Director
1 film together
Notably Ghostbusters: Afterlife
Juan Carlos Fresnadillo
Director
1 film together
Notably Damsel
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Jason Reitman
Director
1 film together · 7.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Ghostbusters: AfterlifeJuan Carlos Fresnadillo
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
DamselCatherine Hardwicke
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Nativity StoryTerry George
Director
1 film together · 6.9 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The PromiseJustin Lin
Director
1 film together · 6.8 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Star Trek BeyondBrett Ratner
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
X-Men: The Last StandSanaa Hamri
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2Thor Freudenthal
Director
1 film together · 6.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Percy Jackson: Sea of MonstersPaul Weitz
Director
1 film together · 5.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
American DreamzSix degrees
Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.
Categories of our own
Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.
Most rewatchable
Ghostbusters: Afterlife
as Gozer (voice)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
The Lake House
as Dr. Anna Klyczynski
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
House of Sand and Fog
as Nadi
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
Ghostbusters: Afterlife
as Gozer (voice)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Royally Screwed
as Queen Lenora
If the career had to be argued in a single scene, our editors would pick one from this film and rest the case.
In their films' words
“You can build a whole film around a performer who knows when not to speak. Shohreh Aghdashloo has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
Ours alone
Recognitions handed out by this desk, on criteria no awards body uses.
Career Achievement
Awarded
23 years of relevant work — not merely a long career, but a long career of choices.
Modern Classic Performer
Awarded
Defining performances delivered inside the last twenty-five years, in films already being taught rather than merely remembered.
Drama Legend
Awarded
8 catalogue titles in drama, each one a reference point for the films that followed.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
Ghostbusters: Afterlife
as Gozer (voice)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Damsel
as Dragon (voice)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Promise
as Marta Boghosian
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters
as Oracle (voice)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Damsel
as Dragon (voice)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Last Knights
as Maria
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Promise
as Marta Boghosian
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
X-Men: The Last Stand
as Dr. Kavita Rao
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Have your say
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Reference
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