TEHRAN – Akbar Abdi, the 57-year-old actor who played roles in over 100 movies and series, mostly are comedies, will receive a Golden Simorgh for his lifetime achievements at the 36th Fajr Film Festival, the organizers announced on Sunday.

The 36th Fajr Film Festival will be held in Tehran from February 1 to 11. Veteran film dubber Manuchehr Esmaeili and director Mohammad-Ali Najfi are scheduled to be honored with lifetime achievement awards.

He began his acting career with “The Traffic Neighborhood”, a popular children’s TV series directed by Dariush Moadebian in 1981.

He soon shot to fame during that time for playing roles in director/actor Reza Jian’s TV series “Masalabad”. 

The portrayal of a chubby schoolchild who was always late in director Hossein Afsahi’s popular TV serial “I Am Late again for School” secured him a position as a professional comedian in Iranian TV.

All these TV series and telefilms prepared the ground for him to try his luck at cinema in 1985 with “A Man Who Became a Mouse” by Ahmad Bakhshi. 

In 1986, he collaborated with Daruish Mehrjui, a director of Iran’s New Wave Cinema, in “The Tenants”.

He also worked in “Mother” and “Delshodegan” with director Ali Hatami, who was known as the Hafez of Iranian cinema due to the poetic ambiance of his movies.

Due to the wide variety of roles he played in the Iranian cinema and television, Abdi was dubbed “the man with a thousand faces of Iranian cinema.”

Abdi also worked as a stage director in several plays, including “Mr. Akbar, the Theater Actor”.
   
Photo: Actor Akbar Abdi in an undated photo
 
MMS/YAW