Nazanin Boniadi (Persian: نازنین بنیادی pronounced Naa-za-neen Bon-yaadi) born May 22, 1980 in Tehran, Iran is a British Iranian actress currently living and working in the US. She got her first big break on the ABC soap opera, General Hospital and its SOAPnet spin-off series, General Hospital: Night Shift as Nurse Leyla Mir. She has mostly starred in TV with a few movies to her credit also, including the recent blockbuster "Iron Man".
She was born in Tehran to educated parents who relocated to London when she was a child, she was educated at a private high school and was astute at study; she set out on a path to study medicine and earned a Bachelor's Degree, with Honors, in Biological Sciences from the University of California Irvine. During this period she won the Chang Pin-Chun Undergraduate Research Award for molecular research into finding a cure for cancer and heart transplant rejection and was Assistant Editor-in-Chief of MedTimes, UCI's undergradute medical newspaper.
After all her medical study and her parents desire for her to be a doctor Nazanin decided that she would not truly be happy on that path but wanted instead to be an actress. Nazanin had always had a creative streak, having had lessons in and performing violin and ballet as a young girl.
Her first credit was hosting the UK childrens television show "Early Bird" going on to land several roles in TV and film she moved to the US where she eventually got the part of Leyla Mir on General Hospital, her first big, regular role and which also makes her the first contract actor to play a Persian character in American daytime television history. She is also the first Iranian-born actress to ever be on contract on an American soap opera.
Nazanin has also starred in a music video called "Bikhial" for Afshin, a popular Iranian pop singer.
She was nominated for an NAACP Image Award for "Outstanding Actress in a Daytime Drama Series" in 2008 for her role in General Hospital. She was also the cover girl for the Iranian-American lifestyle OCPC Magazine in 2006 in which she gave an interview on her career and the future.
USC Film School graduate and Directors Guild of America scholarship recipient, Freya Parekh, stated after directing Nazanin in the film Kal: "Yesterday & Tomorrow";
Nazanin has recently landed a few roles in a few major hollywood productions namely Charlie Wilson's War and Iron Man in the former she has said that the experience of acting opposite Tom Hanks (as that was who her particular character has dialogue with) was a wonderful experience and that being directed by Mike Nichols was exhilirating and a dream come true. She had to go through 4 hours of make up to be aged 10 years for the role of an Afghan refugee in the film about the Soviet-Afghan war.
On her character in General Hospital she has said that
