Shaun Toub

Biography:

Shaun Toub (born February 15, 1958) is an American actor known for his diverse film and television roles. He is best recognized for portraying Yinsen in Iron Man (2008) and Iron Man 3 (2013), Farhad in the Oscar-winning drama Crash (2004), Rahim Khan in The Kite Runner (2007), Majid Javadi in Showtime’s Homeland, and Faraz Kamali in Apple TV+’s Israeli series Tehran (2020).

Toub was born in Tehran, Iran, into an Iranian Jewish family. Both of his parents were podiatrists. When he was two years old, his family moved to Manchester, England, where his mother studied podiatry. He later returned to Iran for several years before moving to Switzerland at age 13. He eventually relocated to Nashua, New Hampshire, where he completed high school. Toub has said that he knew he wanted to be an actor from the age of five.

Over the course of his career, Toub has appeared in numerous notable productions. His credits include Bad Boys (1995), directed by Michael Bay and starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence; Broken Arrow (1996) by John Woo, alongside John Travolta and Christian Slater; and HBO’s Live from Baghdad (2002), featuring Michael Keaton and Helena Bonham Carter. His role as Farhad in Crash (2004) earned him critical acclaim, and he went on to play Joachim, the father of the Virgin Mary, in The Nativity Story (2006). In 2007, he portrayed Rahim Khan in the adaptation of Khaled Hosseini’s novel The Kite Runner.

On television, Toub has also made his mark, including his role as Bonaparte, a major villain, in the later seasons of the series Grimm. In recognition of his work, he was honored with the Cinema Sepharad Award at the 2022 Los Angeles Sephardic Film Festival.