Nazanin Boniadi

Nazanin Boniadi (; Persian: نازنین بنیادی, [nɑːzæˈniːn bonjɑːˈdiː]; born 22 May 1980) is a British actress and activist. Born in Iran and raised in London, she went to university in the United States, where she landed her first major acting role as Leyla Mir in the medical drama General Hospital (2007–2009) and its spin-off General Hospital: Night Shift (2007). Since then, she is best known for playing Nora in the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother (2011), Fara Sherazi in the Showtime spy thriller series Homeland (2013–2014), Esther in the historical drama film Ben-Hur (2016), Clare Quayle in the Starz sci-fi thriller series Counterpart (2017–2018), and Zahra Kashani in the action thriller film Hotel Mumbai (2018).Boniadi was an Amnesty International spokesperson from 2009 to 2015 and served as a board member for the Center for Human Rights in Iran from October 2015 until February 2021.

Boniadi is fluent in English and Persian. She lives in Los Angeles, California.Since she and her parents fled in her infancy, Boniadi has only once visited Iran, as a teenager.

Boniadi was born in Tehran, Iran, in the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution. Less than a month after her birth, she and her parents left Iran and applied to become political refugees in London, where she was raised. She performed violin and ballet as a young girl.She attended an independent school in Hampstead and earned a bachelor's degree, with honours, in biological sciences from the University of California, Irvine. At UCI, she won the Chang Pin-Chun Undergraduate Research Award for molecular research involving cancer treatment and heart transplant rejection. She was also Assistant Editor-in-Chief of MedTimes, UCI's undergraduate medical newspaper. In 2009, she studied contemporary drama at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.