Golshifteh Farahani started studying music and playing the piano at the age of 5. At 12, she entered a music school in Tehran. After graduation, she was accepted at the Vienna Conservatory. At the age of 14 she was cast as the lead in Dariush Mehrjui's The Pear Tree for which she won the Crystal Simorgh for Best Actress from the International Section of the 16th Fajr International Film Festival in Tehran. The win contributed to her decision to stay in Iran and choose a career in film over music. She never boarded the plane to Vienna. Since then she has acted in 18 films, many of which have received international awards. For Boutique she won the Best Actress award from the 26th Nantes Three Continents Festival (France). In recent years she has acted in movies by some of Iran's best directors: Dariush Mehrjui's controversial film the Santoor Player, Bahman Ghobadi's Half Moon (winner of the Golden Shell at the 2006 San Sebastian Film Festival) and the late Rasool Mollagholipoor's M for Mother (Iran's nominee for the 2008 Academy Awards for the Best Foreign Language Film category) for which she won the special prize of the jury for the Best Actress from the 37th Roshd International Film Festival. Golshifteh is highly involved in environmental activities and has also become the ambassador for fighting tuberculosis in Iran.
