Shila Ommi
Shila Ommi, is an accomplished Iranian-American actress of stage, television, film, and voice-over whose family settled in the United States during the Iranian revolution. She is also a UCLA graduate who received Departmental Honors for her Bachelor of Science in Biological Anthropology. With her rich cultural heritage and passion for storytelling, Ommi has made significant contributions to both Western and Iranian cinema and theater, and she is best known for her role in the Apple TV Series Tehran as Nahid Kamali.
Interview by Dina Morrone
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How old were you when your family fled Iran, and where did they settle when you first got to the United States?
I was ten years old when we moved to the United States. I grew up between Studio City, and Van Nuys, California, in the beautiful city of Los Angeles. When we moved here from Iran with my family, the revolution was happening, and my family was very depressed. We were a military family. My dad was
a colonel in the Shah’s army. He loved his country. Unfortunately, when the revolution in Iran happened and the Islamic Republic came into power, they put my dad on their execution list, which is why we never returned. They executed around 250,000 beautiful people. This news was heartbreaking for my whole family. Every day during those first few years, we would get news about another one of my mom and dad’s dear friends who had been tortured and executed in Iran. This caused a lot of sadness and grief, and the way my mom would deal with it was to just keep moving. We would live in Studio City for one year and then move to Van Nuys. Then the next year, back to Studio City, and then , back to Van Nuys. Back and forth until finally, I got to in high school, we stayed in Van Nuys till I graduated.
Did you come to this country already speaking English?
I learned some English at Institute Maryam, a Catholic school I attended in Iran. But I wasn’t fluent in it.
It took some years for that.
How many languages do you speak?
I speak Persian and English fluently. French, Italian, and Spanish are languages I dabble in. With the Persian language, I have performed in plays for Iranians in diaspora. For a decade, I toured in a theatre company, Workshop 79, spearheaded by the gifted Iranian playwright Houshang Touzie, and his talented wife Shohreh Aghdashloo.
What was your very first performing project you did as a child?
I first discovered my love of performing in high school at Van Nuys High School when I was 15. I played Helen Keller’s aunt, and in my senior year, I played Elizabeth Proctor in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. Van Nuys High School was a Science and Performing Arts Magnet. They had a wonderful theater department. I was very enriched as a high schooler to get the science as well as the theater performing arts.
Both of those have been huge in my life. I even went to UCLA as a biological anthropology major, and I was pre-med.
What about your personality is 100% Persian, and what is American?
My Persian side is very caring. Maybe a little overly caring, and maybe a little overly excited when I see my friends. With the Persians, when you’re among Persians and you enter the room, the greetings are so colorful and warm. On the other hand, the American side is more laid back. The Persian side of me passionately cares for people. And maybe meddling, too. I meddle in my friends’ lives because I love them and want the best for them. The American side is the beautiful non-judgment. I’m not saying that all Americans don’t judge, but it feels less judgy. In this country, I feel that you can follow your dreams. You can be whatever you want to be. And live however you want to live.
As a child growing up in Los Angeles, what did you see yourself becoming as an adult?
I wanted to become a veterinarian. I always had an interest in nature and in the animal kingdom. At 18, when I got out of high school, I worked at the Wildlife Waste Station, which was started by Martine Collette. They take care of LA wildlife – wolves, coyotes, bears, horses, monkeys, and all kinds of wildlife that either get rescued from people or need rehabilitation.
I always loved acting, but it was my silent dream because I didn’t believe I could ever be a working actor. The closest thing to acting for me was the possibility of doing plays, so I carved out a living for myself by doing plays for Iranians in the diaspora. I saw those who worked on film and television as gods. But also, I never saw anyone who looked like me, which made me feel like an oddball, so I never imagined that I could be a film actor.
What is your darkest memory of moving to America?
My experience of moving to America was very different from that of most Iranians, who maybe didn’t have the means to leave or had to flee to seek political asylum. We came to America totally by accident. In Iran, my dad was a successful businessman in a construction company called Vima Company that manufactured bricks for buildings, and he was also a philanthropist. He was suing an American company that was taking advantage of him. For the hearing, he brought my mom and I to Los Angeles to visit my older sister, Shiva who had purchased a house and was attending USC. And that is when the revolution in Iran happened.
What was supposed to be a two-week visit changed our lives because we came with nothing and ended up staying. We didn’t bring any money, nothing, because we thought, “We’re going to visit my sister and then go back.” The darkest part of my life at that time was the revolution. We always believed we would go back in six months because there was no way the Islamic Republic would still be in power. That was a big surprise to all of us when that didn’t happen. We weren’t trying to flee, but thank God we happened to be here because my dad would have been executed as well. The regime immediately executed his best friend and business partner, Habib Elghanian, a wonderful man and philanthropist.
The darkest thing about America at the time, of course, was the anti-Iranian sentiment because of the hostages that these stupid kids had kidnapped. These foolish young kids decided that they knew what was best for Iran.
The other dark thing in America at the time that really scared me was that every day, on the local news, there were these horrible headlines of rapists, and mass murderers on the loose. That was scary for me as a child and made me feel like I didn’t have a sense of safety. Certainly, there was no sense of safety in Iran either with the Islamic fanatics in charge. But being here also didn’t feel that safe when you turned on the news. In Iran, as women, if we went back, we would have had to live a terrible life forced to wear a compulsory hijab and suddenly have half the rights of a man. They consider women as half-human. I didn’t want to move back to Iran, but in the US, it also felt like there was so much danger.
Are you currently performing in LA, and in which theater projects are you involved?
I just finished working on a play called Mercy, written masterfully by a British-Iranian playwright named Mandi Riggi. The play was performed at the Hollywood Fringe Festival at the end of June. Theater is such a blessing not just for the performers, but it’s such an important experience for human beings to go see live theatre. I recently worked with a group of my dearest friends creating a musical/dance/multimedia production called Twilight of the Empress. We had Fared Shafinury’s brilliant music composition, Banafsheh Sayyad’s beautiful dance choreography, Hitoshi Inoue’s film art, and it was produced by my best friend, Maryam Sayyad. It’s a musical multimedia theatrical experience. Maryam has a PhD (Doctorate of Mythology). She has been very interested in exploring and sharing ancient Persian mythology with the world. I am thrilled I was able to help her realize her vision.
We plan on staging it again next year. It’s about the goddess Anahita, who is the goddess of trauma – love, water healing traumas, and healing and cleaning those shadow sides of us. I felt it was such an important tool for Iranians to know they come from such a profoundly rich history and a spiritual history long before Islam came in. It’s important for Iranians to know that and for the world to know that because of the rich spiritual history that Iranians have offered to the world, there’s still a lot of untapped wisdom in it.
I feel that Americans don’t really know who Iranians are. They don’t know that if today they refer to their God as a kind and loving God, that was what Iran gifted them. It was the first time that God was seen as a kind and loving being as opposed to jealous, angry, controlling being that the Old Testament was handing us. Even the concept of God has expanded into love and kindness and into those characteristics that human beings would want to emulate.
Are the plays recited mainly in Persian?
No, they are in English.
I want to talk about your other talent, directing and producing, and about your film, Wake Up Sleeping Beauty. What attracted you to the project? Would you like to shift to only directing? What moved you to take on such a heavy subject matter?
Mastaneh Moghadam, the writer of Wake Up Sleeping Beauty, is one of my best friends, and she is a therapist. Mastaneh sees a lot of patients from the Iranian community in LA, and the script she wrote was not only about her own experiences growing up as Iranian immigrant, but about many of her patients’ challenges as well. The story is about a young Iranian-American woman who comes into her power when she is about to give birth to her first child, a girl. This happens through a dream she has, a sort of medicine journey, in which she realizes she has been a shell of a human being all her life because of her need to be a good girl to appease her parents. We children of immigrants, especially Iranians who have lost our homeland, live with so many psychological challenges, especially because of the guilt we feel for our parents who gave up everything for us to live in freedom. The story deals with a lot of taboos and stigmas in our community as well. It was the first feature I made, and it won numerous awards at film festivals.
You mentioned that the movie was shot during the pandemic.
Yes. When the world was shut down for the pandemic in 2020. It was originally commissioned by the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health for the Iranian American community. It was a play, but they came forward and said, “You can’t do a play.” For the past decade or longer, I’ve been making films my dear friend, Hitoshi Inoue, whom I call my creative partner. He is a masterful filmmaker, special effects artist, director, and editor. Everything in film this man can do. I said, “We can take this play and turn it into a feature film.”
The department said, “No, you can’t because we don’t want any of the actors to ever be in the same room together.” I said, “That’s okay.” And so, what I did was I turned my living room into a green screen studio. I put up green sheets everywhere in my living room, and we filmed. Each actor came in on a different day. I directed them and read the lines with them. We did the play four to five times with five different actors from beginning to end while those actors got their lines in and got directed. Then, for the backdrop, We filmed the living room of a dear friend and popped it in. The actors have never seen each other in person to this day. And you’d never know watching it. You can see the movie for free on the Cross Cultural Expressions website.
Is mental illness a topic that doesn’t get talked about in your culture?
Correct. It’s not discussed openly. Thankfully, I feel that things are slowly changing for the better. But I grew up in a culture where everything was a secret, whether it was a disease like cancer or any type of mental illness. They are very afraid of expressing it openly because there’s a huge stigma around it. Not only do people not get help for fear of being ridiculed or looked down upon, but they hush up about their family members. Making Wake Up Sleeping Beauty, was like a service I did for my community. I directed a movie that makes mental illness and the discussion of it very normal and okay to talk about. As much as I’m sad for Iranians like myself who were pushed out of their own country, I am also very grateful that for those of us who have come here, there are opportunities because of organizations like the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health to help us expand our knowledge about ourselves, and about humanity.
What was your biggest surprise when you got here?
The biggest surprise was being in school. Because we went from riches to nothing overnight, I was no longer in a high-end private Catholic school but at an L.A. District public school. I thought it was going to be awful. I was afraid because school in Iran was very hard, and I hated going because of how difficult it was. In fifth grade, we were already doing complicated algebra problems that I wasn’t good at. But it was such a delight for me to see the kids in my class still doing multiplication and longhand division. Things I did in first grade. I was like, “Yay, I get to not be the dumb one in class anymore.”
You said you were at UCLA studying science. How did you transition from science to theater? When did that happen?
Since the seed for my love of theater was planted in my heart at the age of 15, I was constantly working in theater, even while I was going to UCLA as a premed and science major. I was a stage manager for different shows when my friends needed one. If someone dropped out of a play, I jumped in and played the part for them as a favor. It wasn’t until I graduated from UCLA and my dad passed away that same year that a big Iranian theater company that had seen me on stage came after me. I thought they wanted me as a stage manager, it turned out they wanted an actress. After the tour was finished, I thought, “I want to do this professionally”, and be really good at it, so I enrolled in the Ruskin School of Acting. Sir Anthony Hopkins was our master class teacher every Saturday, and it was life-changing.
What do you do to stay mentally grounded and spiritually grounded?
I have been blessed with four incredible older sisters: Shahlah, Shohreh, Shiva, Sholeh, and one brother, Mehran. They are all no-nonsense, funny, down-to-earth, grounded individuals, and they ground me. At any point, if they think your head might be getting a little big, they’ll take care of that. They’ll say something like, “Sit the heck down!” I have also been blessed with a wonderful husband, Dr. Robert Norett for a quarter of a century and we have a very quiet life, and a lot of laughs.
Are you involved with any charities?
For several years, I’ve been involved with Children’s Hope International. They help children in Iran, Afghanistan, and Turkey. I have been an MC for their special galas. It’s very important for me to give back. And pretty much every time I do a play that has to do with the Iranian community, that is also my service of giving back to my community. I see it as being of service whenever I do a play.
When did you first discover voiceover? How did that come about?
I have a friend, Farid Shams who is an incredible animator. I feel indebted to him for giving me my start in voice acting.
About 20 years ago, he reached out to me and wanted me to do a number of voices on a cartoon that he was creating called The Mamoushians. It was a cartoon about a family of cats, of this aristocratic, very wealthy cat family, and it was all in Persian.It was then that I discovered how much I love doing voiceover.
I’ve also taken classes to be able to do different voices. I’m now able to do about 20 distinctly different voices. One of my favorite voiceover jobs was an animation series I did for a human rights watch group called the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran in which I voiced for almost all the characters, including several male voices.
From that experience, you moved forward, and now you have since worked for Disney’s Pixar on the animated film Elemental.
It was the most incredible, beyond my wildest dreams moment when the Pixar team reached out to me to play Ember’s mother, Cinder in Elemental!
I never submitted for it. I have no idea how they found me, but I’m so thankful they did. There’s such a wonderful team of delicious human beings at Pixar, and Disney as well. It was the most amazing experience. Peter Sohn and Denise Reem are a dream team! Plus, I got to meet my animation idol, Peter Doctorat the Oscar’s dinner.
If you could crown one woman, living or dead, who has had the most influence in your life, whom would you crown?
My mother. There are so many incredible women on this planet, and a number of famous ones, but my mom was the first person who taught me to love. I don’t think there’s anything more valuable in this life than to be able to love people.
It all started with the love my mother gave me. She had willpower. I don’t have that kind of willpower, but it’s something I’m always working on. To be more disciplined, to do more, to be better every day, and to do something that makes me better than I was the day before.
Do you have any pets?
When my mom passed, I got her dog named Malous. She was a little Yorkie who was a little bossy pants. She helped make missing my mom a little easier because I felt like I always had a part of her with me.
I used to have chickens. I highly recommend having chickens to anyone who has a backyard. They are so much fun, and they’re easy to care for.
Not many know that chickens are very smart. One day, one of my chickens, Ms. Ghamar Khanoom, fell into the pond. Her best friend, another chicken named Shamsi, came to the back door and yelled out an alarm until we went to save her. They take care of each other. Of course, as with all animals that are smart, there is a pecking order, a ranking system. They do form friendships, and their friendships are forever. Shamsi laid her very first egg on my chest, which was amazing. It happened one day when I was sick in bed with the flu and was lying there with the door to the backyard open. She came in and jumped up on the bed. And then jumped up on my chest. I let her settle in my inner arm and then she sat under my armpit. That is where and when she layed her very first egg. I know she felt safe with me. They’re incredible animals. I wish humanity would evolve to a point where we realize that we are here – not to take, but to take care of this Earth and each other. To be stewards of the land, take care of the trees, take care of the forests, take care of the animals
Do you have any upcoming projects you’d like to share with us?
Mandi Riggi’s play, Mercy is expected to come back to LA at a larger theatre at some point. We are also hoping to tour the musical/multimedia production of Twilight of The Empress sometime next year. I hope Tehran season 3 comes out soon, they are a team of beautiful compassionate artists, and I miss them.
I will be playing the role of Pas in a Netflix TV series that comes out next month called KAOS starring Jeff Goldblum, who, incidentally, used to be one of my acting teachers way back in the day. It’s a fabulous show, written by Charlie Covell. It also stars Janet McTeer, David Thewlis, Cliff Curtis, Aurora Perrineau and the lovely lady who plays my daughter, Leila Farzad.
You do something called Tannous Method. Please explain to us what this is.
It is a deeply moving and even therapeutic form of sound meditation named after it’s originator, Alexandre Tannous. I have been studying this method with Alexandre, and David Shemesh for a a couple of years.
The Tannous sound meditation is done by having the receiver lie down with their eyes closed.
while the practitioner plays instruments that are called over tone-emitting instruments around their body. It’s an interactive experience because you have to actively focus on the sounds you hear as you lie there.
It profoundly changes your brain waves, your neurochemistry, your mental and emotional state, as well as your body. And it has the capacity to shift past trauma.
I’ve been working with friends who are therapists. And I’m now a sound meditation facilitator for them when they do group therapies. It’s a service I do to give back to my friends, my family, and the community.
Special Thank you to:
Shila Omni
Photography by:
JSquared Photography
@j2pix
Hair and Makeup by:
Edward Hakopian
@edward_hakopian
Wardrobe provided by:
Saffron Boutique
@saffron_boutique
Photos provided by:
Theo & Juliet
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