Shahi in 2010, photo by Prphotos

Birth Name: Aahoo Jahansouz Shahi

Place of Birth: Euless, Tarrant, Texas, U.S.

Date of Birth: January 10, 1980

Ethnicity:
*75% Iranian
*25% Spanish

Sarah Shahi is an American actress and model. She is known for her roles in the films Shades of Ray, AmericanEast, Static, Bullet to the Head, Road to Paloma, Hangman, Bad Therapy, and Black Adam, and on the series The L Word, Life, Fairly Legal, Person of Interest, and Sex/Life.

Her birth name, Aahoo, means “gazelle” in Farsi. Her father, Abbas Jahansouz Shahi, is of Iranian descent. Her mother, Mah Monir Soroush Azar, an interior designer, was born in Spain, to an Iranian father and a Spanish mother. Sarah has three children with her former husband, actor Steve Howey.

Her father’s family left Iran two years before the Iranian Revolution. After the Revolution, her father, who was working at the American Embassy in Iran, was slated for execution, but fled the country. Sarah was raised speaking Persian, and competed in beauty pageants as a child.

About her upbringing, Sarah has stated:

[Euless]’s a tiny little town and a charming place to grow up. But every boy I liked never liked me back. To be beautiful in Texas, you had to be blonde and blue-eyed and have a name like Ann. Aahoo was a little weird for them.

Sarah is said to be a great-great-granddaughter of Fath-Ali Shah Qajar of the Qajar Dynasty, who ruled Iran from 1797 to 1834, by one of his wives, Begom Khanom. Begom was a daughter of Hossein Qoli Khan Afshar, niece of Begom Khanom, daughter of Emam Qoli Khan Afshar, through their son Jahansouz Shah.

Source: Sarah talks about her background – https://www.youtube.com

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