Excerpt from Disruptors 4
“I want to save Iran!” It is not something you would expect a 5-year-old to declare, especially while glued to images of the Iran-Iraq war from the refuge of her London council flat. But somehow, I did.
Maybe it was because I was born in the aftermath of a revolution that set back my homeland generations. Or perhaps it was the influence of a household where frequent conversations about equality, justice and freedom were inseparable from hope. My 19-year-old mother had marched heavily pregnant with me, protesting the rise of theocratic rule, while my father narrowly escaped imprisonment—and possibly worse—by the Islamic Republic’s revolutionary court. Even as a child, I understood the importance of standing up to injustice and believed that one person could illuminate an untraveled path. Looking back, it was not grandiosity—it was the unfiltered idealism of a child who saw the world as it could be.
“Acting and activism are, at their core, about storytelling: one challenges the world to confront the human condition, while the other demands the courage to change it. Both are bound by empathy, a force powerful enough to disrupt the status quo.”
My earliest memories are steeped in resilience: my parents rebuilding their lives in the wake of a regime that had destroyed so much of what they cherished. Their 1977 wedding photos are a bittersweet glimpse into the Iran they lost—an Iran where women dressed as they wished, danced freely alongside men and lived without the threat of a morality police. It was a nation amidst progress.
I was just three weeks old when my parents fled to the UK, seeking asylum. With little money and no safety net, they took on menial jobs—far beneath their qualifications—to keep us afloat. On weekends, perched on my father’s shoulders, we rallied outside the Islamic Republic Embassy, demanding an end to Ayatollah Khomeini’s reign of terror that even targeted opponents abroad. My mother ensured I stayed connected to my heritage, enrolling me in Persian Saturday school to preserve the rich culture the regime sought to erase. Witnessing my parents turn heartbreak into hope became my blueprint for navigating the world.
Nazanin Boniadi is an Iranian-born, SAG and AACTA Award-nominated actress and renowned activist. She has partnered with Amnesty International since 2008 to campaign for the rights of disenfranchised populations across the world, with a focus on the unjust conviction and treatment of Iranian youth, women and prisoners of conscience. She was appointed as an Amnesty International UK ambassador in 2020. She is the recipient of the 2020 Freedom House Raising Awareness Award, and the 2022 Ellis Island Medal of Honor.
In 2022, she became a leading figure on the global stage advocating for the people of Iran and the “Woman Life Freedom” pro-democracy movement in her homeland. In 2023, she became a Sydney Peace Prize laureate and received the Feminist Majority Foundation’s ‘Defending Democracy & Advancing Equality Award.’ She currently serves as a board director for the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran, is a member of the steering committee of The World Movement for Democracy, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
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