Mozhan Marnò

Triple-threat Iranian-American actress, director, and writer Mozhan Marnò has built a strong reputation thanks to her work in shows such as House of Cards, Madam Secretary, The Blacklist. She played investigative journalist Ayla Sayyad in the second and third seasons of House of Cards, earning her share of a Screen Actors Guild Ensemble Award nomination. She also won a Satellite Award nomination and much praise for her portrayal of tragic Soraya Manutchehri, an Iranian woman stoned to death after being accused of adultery in 1986, in the 2009 film, The Stoning of Soraya M. The film won many awards at film festivals, and more recently, Marnò has spoken out on social media against the ongoing oppression of women in Iran.

Marnò was born in Los Angeles to Iranian parents and gained her MFA in Acting from the world-famous Yale School of Drama. She got her first significant movie break in the 2008 spy thriller, Traitor, and the following year, she won plaudits for her role in The Stoning of Soraya M. On the small screen, she made small appearances in various shows before being cast in two episodes of The Mentalist. Her stock began to rise in 2014 when she appeared in House of Cards, Madam Secretary, and The Blacklist for the first time. She would go on to play Samar Navabi in over 100 episodes of the latter show, being part of the main cast from the second to the sixth series and returning for the ninth.

Her most recent work includes recurring roles in the 2022 miniseries Pam and Tommy and Fleshman is in Trouble.