Niki Karimi

Born on the 10th of September 1971 in the city of Tehran, Iran, Niki Karimi is an Iranian actress, film director, as well as a screenwriter. She was schooled in Iran throughout her life and took a liking to acting, art, and theatre when she was just an elementary school student. It is this early passion in the arts of literature and film that inspired the young woman to become an actress.

While Karimi started getting roles professionally as early as 1989, her first formal steps into her acting career began in 1990, when she was cast as a bride in Behrooz Afkhami's film The Bride, which became an immediate success.

Her career, however, finally took off when she was awarded the silver shell for Best Actress for her portrayal as “ Sara Story coming soon... >> Read More... ” in Darioush Mehruji’s hit, Sara – this was an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House and revolved around a domestic household and the vagaries of interaction between husband and wife. This wasn’t the only award that graced Karimi, as she again won Best Actress for her performance in Two Women, which hit the screens in 1999.

However, this award was for her performance in the Taormina film festival in Italy and in Cairo film festival in Egypt. Karimi’s work as an actress did not stop there; she has been on the jury for over twenty different film festivals, such as the Karlovy Vary Festival, the Berlin Film Festival, the 60th Cannes Film Festival, and many more. Her pride stands with the fact that she also acted as an assistant to Abbas Kiarostami, a phenomenal Iranian director, film producer, photographer, screenwriter, and poet, from 1992 to 2007.

This mentee status under such an influential person is what spurred Karimi to expand her career by branching out from acting to write and direct her 2001 hit, To Have or Not to Have. It was produced by her friend and mentor, Abbas Kiarostami, and thus, the film won the young actress her first award as a film director in Iran’s Rain Festival. Niki Karimi’s success story, however, is far from over. In the year 2005, she was nominated for her film One Night at the Cannes Film Festival, where she admitted that acting was not enough to satiate her hunger for the arts, and she went deeper into directing and writing her own stories and plotlines.

Her talents as an Iranian film buff also lent her a helping hand as a translator – she has translated Marlon Brando's biography Songs My Mother Taught Me from English to Persian and made it a wide phenomenon in various regional countries. Her most recent nomination for best actress was at the Fajr Film Festival, for her role in I am His Wife, which was released in 2011.

She has also been awarded by the same festival as best actress, director, and producer for her last and most recent film. Her successes have piled up one after the other to bring her forward as one of the most iconic young minds to grace the film industry in today’s era.