One evening in July 1994, the brickyards of southern Tehran. A sequence from The Blue-Veiled (Rakhshan Bani-Etemad) is being filmed in which Ezatollah Entezami has a part. The crew prepares to take some shots and, meanwhile, or when he is not playing, Entezami sits lost in thoughts. In the pandemonium made by the comings and goings of the crew together with the great number of locals with unruly children, he sits on a chair staring at some unknown spot. While sitting right beside the crowd, he seems oblivious of all the noise and commotion around him. He has taken refuge in his own privacy. It's as if he neither sees nor hears anything. He does not bat an eye, his salt-and-pepper hair wind- blown. He looks dazed us if in meditation until it's time for him to enact before the camera the role of an old man in love. Since I am not familiar with the story of the movie, I sometimes worry whether something might be wrong with him. 

One day in March 1991 a house in northern Tehran, Entezami is sitting while the make-up artist works on his face. The sessions last for two long and exhausting hours. Indifferent to what is being done to his face and eyes, Entezami gives the impression of now being present. He is murmuring words which are unintelligible at the first, but then gradually become recognizable as Turkish words. He is evidently arguing with an imaginary interlocutor. But I do not know Turkish and fail to understand what he says (later, he tells me that he does not know Turkish either, but makes up the words and affects Turkish accent and enunciation). 

One of his eyes is placed under a false-eye and the make-up man touches up his eyelids and eyebrows. He remains passive as if in meditation until the moment we see him perform the part of a poor old crooked man--but smart and cunning--in Dariush Mehrjui's Banoo, one of the films in which he reaches the heights of his art but which unfortunately has not been screened for public- viewing. 

There are not many actors in the Iranian cinema who take their work as seriously as Ezatollah Entezami. He started late his career in the cinema--when he was 45 years old--after years of experience in the theater. In 25 years, he acted in 35 films (five of which were never screened), two TV serials (one of which remained unfinished), and directed a TV movie (in which he also acted), but which has been shelved. A proud record, a remarkable record amongst all of the others. With the fame and popularity which, he achieved from the very beginning, this list could have been much longer. But he chooses his scripts and his parts with the utmost care and exemplary scruples. His remarkable first performance in The Cow (Dariush Mehrjui, 1969) put a heavy burden on his shoulders and although he performed in a number of unremarkable movies, even in those he did his best and it is his acting which remains the only redeeming feature in those films. However, he has never ceased to blame himself for taking part in them. In an undeclared but commonly-held belief, Ezatollah Entezami is the best actor in the Iranian cinema. This belief is so undeniable that there has never been any need to declare it. 

He was born in an old part of Tehran--presently the city park-- in the summer of 1924. His father was an army sergeant who left with the army before he was born in order to crush the rebellion of the Shahsavan tribe of northwestern Iran. For months his family had no news of him and presumed him killed in battle. Entezami was the eldest of the fourteen children of this large family; but as is the rule with such families, a number of the children did not survive. Entezami lost five brothers and sisters of different ages. 

Despite the strict religious beliefs of his parents, Entezami was instinctively drawn from very early on to the theater. At first by witnessing traditional performances in various feasts and ceremonies and then, as a young adult, by seeing plays performed on the stage. During those same years, he became acquainted with the cinema. The first movie he ever saw was titled in Iran Fifteen Years of Obscurity with Akim Tamiroff in the leading role. Like all young people of this land who are in love with the cinema and the theater but whose families do not approve of such things, he went to the cinema and the theater secretly. But Entezami was lucky in that he was sometimes accompanied by his uncle who happened to be an amateur performer in both arts. He says: "One day I bought a 'santoor' and took it home. I loved music, too. When my father heard me play the instrument, he raised hell. My love for music was put aside for quite some time as a consequence. Neither my father nor my mother ever saw any of my performances, not even years later. I even kept my radio work secret from them. In those days not many houses had a radio. One day my father was invited to a house which did have a set and heard the announcer say, 'The young artist, Ezatollah Entezami...' Another tumult was raised in our house. 

My parents, like many others considered a career in the cinema or the theater the job of a "minstrel" which in our culture is a low and vulgar job. For years, while working in the theater, I used to tell my father that I was the ticket controller; and he would always warn me against wearing a colorful costume and going up on the stage. My mother never even saw The Cow and to her death (in 1979) refused to look at television." While in high school Entezami encountered a group of people who later made up the body of professionals of the Iranian theater. He entered the theater as a professional in the 1940s not as an actor but as a curtain-raiser performer. He would recite satirical poems on political and social issues of the day accompanied by rhythmic popular music. 

He was the third curtain-raiser performer in the history of the Iranian theater and his performance soon attracted more attention than those of his two predecessors. His pleasing voice combined to his talent in mixing rhythmic songs with the appropriate gestures which approached acting made him greatly popular in those years. His success enlarged the scope of his work both in various theaters and eventually the radio. He says: "The subject of the curtain-raisers had to do with people's anguish all difficulties, particularly since it was during the Second World War while Iran was occupied by the Allied Forces. One of the curtain-raisers was about the poor quality of the bread. At first, curtain-raiser performers followed the French tradition and wore white-tie and sang to European tunes. But gradually, the Iranian flavor prevailed." In the 1940s, a very troubled decade half of which involved war and occupation and the other half political turmoil at home, the life of the Iranian artists was inseparable from politics. Even Entezami who tried to keep out of politics could not avoid poking fun at politics and politicians because of the nature of his job. 

During that decade. he was arrested several times but with his usual cunning managed to set himself free. With the inauguration of the Ferdowsi Theater in 1947, the late Abdol-Hossein Nooshin, a member of the Tudeh Party (Communist Party), the Stanislavski tradition was brought to the Iranian stage and the performances of serious plays by famous playwrights greatly changed the Iranian theater. Ferdowsi Theater was the first and only theater of the time which did not have curtain-raisers. Entezami who longed for wider horizons, left his curtain-raiser performances for which he had achieved fame and popularity and became one of Nooshin's students. Nooshin's classes, in addition to acting included classes on literature and ballet, and Entezami started to act in the plays. Three years later, Nooshin together with a number of people from the Tudeh Party were arrested. 

In 1950, Nooshin escaped from prison and left for Moscow where he remained until his death. But Entezami and his friends continued their activities until the coup d'etat in August 1953. Following the coup d'etat, Entezami and many fellow artists, intellectuals and politicians were arrested, but since his dossier did not contain any serious offense, he was released a few months later. He decided to go abroad to realize his long-time dream of studying the theater academically. In the spring of 1954, with his meager savings he reached Hanover by land and through a friend managed to find work in a foundry in the outskirts of the town. His salary was one mark per hour and his work was hard and harsh. He attended night classes in an art school situated at some 40 kilometers from Hanover. For four years he worked in the foundry during the day and attended his night classes. 

"I was in a difficult situation I hardly was aware of what and when I ate. To travel 40 kilometers twice daily was in itself hard enough. I could not afford to heat my room. When it was cold, my window was covered with thick ice. I was often obliged to sleep fully dressed with my coat on and still shivered till dawn'" The art school also had a course on the cinema and Entezami acted in a 16mm short film called The Thief of the Odes. He was stage-struck and loved both the cinema and the theater. 

He says: "Four years of hard work and studying in Germany in those difficult circumstances played an important role in my life and were fruitful years which made a man out of me." When Entezami returned home in 1958, it was almost a decade after the Iranian cinema had gone into its second phase--however, this was not the kind of cinema he wished to work for. His ambition to take part in serious films made him turn down parts in mediocre soap operas offered to him by producers and filmmakers "I was once invited to the studio of the most famous producer-director of those years. He offered me a part in a movie and explained that, in order to ensure its commercial success, he would have a famous Iranian dancer perform in it. I felt offended and humiliated. I left the studio and for years forgot about acting in films." 

Entezami dedicated his time and experience entirely to the theater. Television had newly arrived in Iran in those years and TV dramas were one of its regular features. Entezami joined the Fine Arts Department--a branch of the Ministry of Culture and Arts of the time--and in addition to acting on the stage, he appeared in the weekly TV dramas for a number of years. In the absence of videotapes in those days, no records remain of those live TV dramas which he never saw. In a decade he acted in more than 400 plays and TV dramas and he personally directed a number of them. During several summers, he traveled with a group of actors to various towns of the country and mainly performed in army camps. Yet another of Entezami's activities after his return to Iran was dubbing. After a couple of years however. when his activity in the theater became more extensive, he no longer engaged in dubbing. Later on though, once he started acting in films, till the mid-1980s when live recording was not prevalent during filming, Entezami was one of the few actors who insisted to speak for himself because of the characteristics of his voice. He is a firm believer in the impossibility of separating the voice from the gestures in acting and thus speaks critically of the few films in which someone else has spoken in his stead. In 1968 Dariush Mehrjui who had studied cinema and philosophy in the United States, invited Entezami to act in his new film. Mehrjui had already made a commercial and costly--but unsuccessful--film called Diamond 33 which was a spoof of the James Bond movies. He now wanted to make a movie based on the play The Cow which was performed on TV in 1965 with Entezami in the leading part. 


In a meeting with Entezami, Dr. Gholam-Hossein Saedi, the author of the play (one of the most influential playwrights in the 1960s who died in Paris in 1985) accompanied Mehrjui. In one decade Entezami had become one of the most prestigious actors of the Iranian theater. He had distanced himself from the popular theater before the avant-garde theater of Iran had come to fruition. This prestige, and the fame brought to him by his TV performance in The Cow, resulted in Entezami's cautious step into his first experience in the cinema. This cautious, scrupulous and studious approach to the offers made to him remained a characteristic of his in later years. Whether in the theater or in the cinema, Entezami always worked very hard on his parts. He searches in his memories and all around him for similar characters and borrows certain characteristic gestures or words from them. He then studies the tone, the feeling and the way each and every word ought to be uttered in his sentences. From very early on, one of his techniques for mastering his part has been research. 

"For my role in The Cow, I did a lot of research and practiced assiduously. With the help of a friend. I even spent two weeks in a village where my host, at my request, did not take his cow to the fields so that I could study its behavior. I would spend hours in the stable day and night just looking at The Cow. Sometimes the host would bring me food there and seeing me staring at his cow, would smile mockingly and go away. Entezami says that he lives his parts rather than act them. All the while he is acting in a film from the reading of the script until the end of the filming, his mind is occupied with his part. His written souvenirs while acting in The Cow illustrate his attitude and particular approach: 

"As a rule, we could go to Tehran for the weekend. But after the cow's death, I no longer wished to go to Tehran. I wanted to remain there and be by myself. One night when I was alone with the servant in our quarters near the village where the filming took place, I left with my acting outfit and make-up. I was not aware of where I was going or what I was doing. I do not know the reason, whether it was The Cow's death, the hard work ahead of me or the terror which had seized me... I really don't know. It was midnight and I suddenly found myself getting out of a car in Bandar Anzali, still dressed for the part. I walked for hours by the sea. After much wandering, I finally returned to the main road in order to get back to my quarters. Because of the way I looked, cars refrained to stop to pick me up. Eventually, a car did stop and the driver stared at me questioningly and asked, "What do you do?" I told him that I was an actor and gave him some details of my work to which he listened with attention. But, until we reached my quarters, I had the impression that he had not believed me." 

At first, The Cow was not allowed to be screened in Iran. When the film was awarded the Critics' International Prize at Venice Film Festival, the censors In Iran were forced to give permission for home screening. They were of the opinion that the depiction of a poor village where the death of its one and only cow leads to the madness of its owner would be to the discredit of the country. But the critics free from political considerations, saw in it a deep philosophical transmutation. The Cow met with admiration at various international film festivals and Entezami was awarded the prize for Best Actor at the Chicago Festival in 1971. That was the very first time that the performance of an Iranian actor was awarded a prize at an International festival. The Cow heralded the serious presence of the Iranian cinema at international festivals, and until the 1980s when a new wave of remarkable Iranian films were presented in international film festivals, the Iranian cinema was remembered because of The Cow. The opportunity to play such a role is no doubt a unique chance for actors to show their worth, a part which, as they say, "can go farther." 

Entezami met this challenge with great success at his first go in the cinema. Although he utterly loses himself in his part, nonetheless, he is aware of the camera without any trace of the exaggerated overacting which was in vogue at the time and consequently achieves the part of a lasting character in the history of the Iranian cinema and acting. Masht Hassan's amorous talk to his cow, or when he washes The Cow in the pond, or the scene of the night before The Cow's death in the stable all depict a primitive strange and unusual love which goes far beyond the love for one's beloved, or the love for one's children (Masht Hassan has none) or even affection for a cow which is the one and only cow in the village and the source of his income. This strange love can be detected in Entezami's every gesture, every look and every word which he utters: When he shows his neighbors the talisman to keep the evil eye away from his cow, when he hears of his cow's disappearance and runs wildly to his house, when he emerges from the empty stable and says with utter disbelief (..."but my cow wouldn't run away..." and then sits at the stable's entrance when he goes on top of the roof of the stable and waits for the moon to rise and his cow to return, or when he runs wildly at night in the alleys of his village like a shadow and in fact becomes his very own cow running away from those who are trying to seize him. And when, with a mouthful of hay, he turns around to look at a number of villagers staring at him through the window panes, one cannot help thinking that the villagers' backing away at the sight of his distorted face is a most natural reaction. In fact, when Masht Hassan turns his face towards us, we too are frightened and puzzled. 

When studying the performances of various actors we can usually recollect certain shots and various scenes and quote those as the high moments of their performance. In the case of Entezami's performance in The Cow, moments such as these are so numerous that they match the number of times he appears on the screen. It is quite obvious that when he reaches such heights, it is not merely with an outward display of his gestures and strange reactions (but it is undeniable that the scene in the stable where he shouts under a ray of light has the most powerful effect of them all) even his sitting quietly on the balcony of the teahouse beside some other villagers and peacefully lighting his pipe make him so believable a peasant. You possibly might think that if you were to approach him, putting your hand on his shoulder (to ask: How is it going, Masht Hassan?) real village dust might rise up from his striped coat. 

The following year Entezami's second film was once again made by Dariush Mehrjui. It was based on a TV play in which Entezami had acted. The script of Mr. Simpleton was written by Mehrjui in collaboration with the writer of the play--Ali Nasirian--who had the main part in the film. The script was extended to include a long introduction which was not part of the original play. Entezami had two different roles in the two parts of the film: A crooked and cheating real-estate agent in the first part and a traditional teahouse owner in the mountains of northern Tehran in the second. Although The Cow was highly influential on the artistic cinema of its time, it did not meet with financial success, and so didn't influence the film industry. 

By contrast, Mr. Simpleton, with an eye for commercial success was a well-made and successful film. This success which was due as usual to Entezami's presence created a "type" with whom he became associated. This type was a combination of two roles: a worldly middle-aged man who spoke well but was something of a fraud and a cheat, was altogether an attractive character whom one did not resent despite his guile. 

Entezami was lucky in that he was one of the pioneers of a new movement in the Iranian cinema and acted in a number of films mode by Iranian intellectuals. Had the Iranian cinema remained as it used to be before The Cow, Entezami in all likelihood would have returned once again to the theater. He had his own technique for developing his parts. He says that he must first of all believe in the part and then draw from all his experience. Knowledge and research in order to become that character. His concern for details, his elaboration and awareness of the ups- and-downs of his part until it develops into its final shape, with or without the help of the director, is so filled with love and enthusiasm that without them, such achievements cannot be conceived. Other actors too might perhaps have more or less the same technique, but, apart from his meticulous care when accepting a role, what makes him so different from the others is "a certain something" which he alone possesses. Acting is in his very soul. 

Although he belongs to a generation who started acting in the theaters in the 1940s and was highly active in the 1960s (a generation of actors some of whom overacted to the extent that even today you need to be of iron in order to watch them), his inner gift and sharp intuition in addition to "that certain something" made him different and quite unique among them. His ever-searching mind, his ambition and his thirst for knowledge caused him in 1968 when he was 45 years old and had already acted in The Cow, to enter the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Tehran to study the theater. 

For four years and while studying at the university, he was active as a professional actor both in the theater and the cinema. When he graduated in 1972, he was the best known and best liked actor of the Iranian cinema. At the end of the 70s, Entezami had acted in fourteen films which, with a couple of exceptions, were all the works of the Iranian intellectual filmmakers. Besides The Cow and Mr. Simpleton, other noteworthy movies he acted in were directed by Dariush Mehrjui: In The Postman, based on Woyzeck by the German playwright George Buchner (1813-1837), which won a prize at the Berlin Film Festival, Entezami played the role of a rich landowner in the north of Iran. The landowner, like his ancestors. exploited the peasants, but with the arrival of his young nephew from Europe who is accompanied by his foreign fiancee. he tries to convince his uncle to use the new Western methods of exploitation. 

In The Cycle which Mehrjui made in 1975, but which remained unscreened until the Spring of 1978, Entezami played with great vigor the part of a blood-dealer who fed on other people's blood like a leech. In its biting and bitter realism, the film was an allegory of the entire society, with Dr. Sameri in charge of administering its affairs. The censors of the time had not made a mistake in their decision. Entezami also performed in the mini- serial of Mehrjui entitled Alamut, a modern version of ancient history. It was never finished and the project was abandoned halfway through without a single part being edited. 

Other important movies in which Entezami appeared in the 1970s were the following: 1972 - Sattar (Ali Hatami) in the role of one of the leaders of the Constitutional Revolution at the turn of the century; Sadegh the Kurd (Nasser Taghvaee) in the role of a gendarme in the south of Iran whose daughter is murdered after being raped by a truck driver and whose son-in-law in a rage for revenge goes berserk and starts killing truck drivers while he is torn between duty and his personal feelings; Bita (Hajir Dariush) in the role of the mad father of an unruly daughter; 1973 - Love's Tumult (Houshang Hessami) in the role of a traditional man who becomes prey to lust but whose faith proves stronger and he castrates himself. 1976 was not a good year for Entezami. Apart from Mehrjui's Alamut, two other movies in which Entezami performed never got screened. 

The Kingdom of Heaven (Khosrow Haritash) after being screened in the Fifth Tehran International Film Festival (1977) remained forever on the shelf. The Theatrical Company (Bozorgmehr Raffia) was once again based on a play in which Entezami had acted. This was in fact a play made into a film which was never completed and no one ever saw the unfinished version. It ranks amongst those films of which Entezami is not proud. 

Another film for which he gives himself a big zero was also made that same year: The Sleeping Lion (Esmail Kooshan), the man who offered upon Entezami's return from Germany a part which he did not accept. The Dust Dwellers (Davood Roostai) was made the following year, but was never screened and is counted amongst the forgotten movies Entezami never cared for. The Condemned (Hadi Saber) was made that same year and he played the role of a madman who finally drowns himself. This is yet another of his unremarkable films. 

It was in 1978 that Entezami, for the first time, experimented with directing behind a TV camera. Originally a play, he both directed The Journey and played its main role. Its scenes were a mix of soundstage and location footage from the roads surrounding Shiraz. Entezami is in the role of a cunning confidence man who pretends to help a group of travelers on their trip, but, in fact, through his guile manages to get them to their destination late, in a more expensive fashion, tired and offended. At the onset of the Revolution, The Journey was not screened at first because of its political connotations and later because of ethical reasons. 


Entezami was at the height of his career in the 1980s. His good name and prestige in the year prior to the Islamic Revolution have made him one of the most respected actors presently and he is accepted as such both by the general public and the elite. While many filmmakers and actors who were active before the Revolution were not allowed to continue their work because they had made "Immoral films," Entezami enjoys the respect and admiration of the authorities. He gave one of the best performances of his career in this period in Hajji Washington (1982) directed by Ali Hatami, considered the best work of this director yet. 

The final version of this film which has not been screened yet, is the story of Hajji Hossein-Gholi Noori, Iran's first ambassador to the United States who went to Washington during the reign of Nasir al-Din Shah Qajar and thus became known as "Hajji Washington." During his one-year stay there, because of the Embassy's slack business and subsequent lack of resources, he is compelled at first to get rid of his servants and then gets personally involved in the case of a Native American who seeks political asylum in the Embassy. The central government recalls him because of his lack of success in carrying out his diplomatic functions while the American Government expels him for giving political asylum to a Native American. Humiliated and dejected, Hajji Washington returns home. Entezami's remarkably strong portrayal of an Iranian Qajar statesman with all the typical characteristics of the period is combined with the particular traits of the personality of Hajji Hossein-Gholi Noori as seen by Hatami-Entezami. 

One of the most striking sequences is the one to which William McKinley is shown in the Iranian Embassy. He was the President of the United States when Hajji arrived in Washington, and some months later was succeeded by the next President. But since Hajji neither reads the newspapers nor meets with anyone, he is not aware of the change and singlehandedly entertains his guest lavishly. Hajji writes a report about his meeting with "The President" to the Shah only to find out by the end of the evening that the man who has come to visit him in a cart and in a cowboy's outfit, is now a simple farmer. The former president had come to the Iranian Embassy to find out how pistachios are grown, Hajji having presented him with some pistachios when presenting his credentials. 

A number of other films of this period with Entezami in them, were made by Ali Hatami as well, the man who does research solely on the history of the last century and its Iranian personalities and more importantly, tries to create the real Iranian cinema and its language. Hatami has never been more successful than in Hajji Washington. 

As of 1980, Hatami endeavored to make a difficult and complicated TV serial entitled Hazardastan. The serial met with short and long breaks due to the changes in the direction of TV policies following the Revolution, until at last with radical changes from the original script, it went on the air in 1988. Entezami who was playing in Hazardastan in addition to Hajji Washington, during one of the long breaks and as a result of it, performed in yet another two movies made by Hatami: Kamalolmolk (1984) and Jafar Khan has Returned from Europe (1986). In Hazardastan, the events of which involve the last years of the reign of the Qajar Dynasty and the first months of the occupation of Iran by the Allied Forces in 1941, Entezami plays the part of a powerful aristocrat of the second period with the utmost skill. His portrayal depicts a big strong old man who with his wealth and political background is the governor of that province and can by a nod of the head get rid of anything or anyone that crosses his path. Entezami says, "It's a very good serial, and although I went through many hardships as I did while acting in Hajji Washington in Italy, I am satisfied with my performance. But I wish my own voice had been used at the dubbing stage. Hatami believes in dubbing and, with one exception only, voice recording has never been done while filming. That is because his work is highly stylized and he polishes all the elements and interferes where he thinks necessary until they meet with his approval. I had worked real hard on the personality of "Farmanfarma" and his voice, but as a result of a clash between us at the end of the serial he did not invite me to the dubbing session." 




During the second break while making Hazardastan, Hatami made a film about Kamalolmolk, the great painter of the Qajar period who died in exile at the beginning of the reign of Reza Shah. Entezami plays the part of Nasir al-Din Shah Qajar and once again is dissatisfied that his own voice was not used for the part. Hatami's inspiration for making Jafar Khan Has Returned from Europe was a famous play by Hassan Moghaddam written during Reza Shah's reign and depicts the first clashes between traditional and modern life (as shown by the return of the first group of Iranian students from Europe) on Iranian society. 

Entezami has the part of the father of a young man who has returned from Europe. The father is a traditional man who owns a shish kebab restaurant. His son's behavior is the source of such constant shocks to him that he eventually loses his mind and becomes mad. The movie met with the censors' disapproval and Hatami was forced to leave his work. However, with the producers persistence and a change of director, the filming of different sequences and the elimination of certain sequences of Hatami, changes in the dialogue and new editing, a mutilated version was prepared for screening in order to save the producers' investment. The film was screened without the name of the director in 1988 and was an utter failure. 

In the 1980s Entezami performed in five films made by Dariush Mehrjui. The first one, The School We Went To was made by Mehrjui in 1980 for the Center for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults. It was at first entitled The Backyard of Adl-e Afagh School. Because of the political innuendos and the subject, the screening of the film did not take place with the new title until 1989. Entezami has a short part in the film and plays a librarian of a school in which a number of students produce the school paper and write a symbolic article about the differences between the backyard of the school as opposed to its front court. 

When the article meets with the negative reaction of the school authorities--especially its principal--and the school paper is confiscated, the students, with the help of their literature teacher and librarian, fight the censorship and eventually win their case. The librarian's role is a short part in which Entezami stifles. He has often said that he is not concerned about the length of his part and if a character manages to convince him in a short part, he is ready to work on it. In his short roles Entezami reminds one of Orson Welles and his brilliance in stealing the entire show in the few minutes he appears on the screen. Another of Entezami's short parts was in the popular box office success Hamoon (1990) of Mehrjui. 

In this film he plays the part of a lawyer whose dramatic presence is only seen in a few sequences. This character is a reminder of the familiar "type" Entezami performed in Mr. Simpleton and which took shape with the help of Mehrjui himself. Entezami says: "I loved this part and turned down several offers because of it. But I believe the elimination of a key sequence in which I played was a serious blow to the movie. Especially since I performed in this film under difficult conditions shortly after undergoing two major operations. Mehrjui was not very kind to me in those circumstances. The bitter memories of those days and the elimination of that particular sequence make me look dubiously at that part." 

In none of Entezami's movies the character of that familiar cunning but lovable man is as brilliantly portrayed as in The Tenants by Dariush Mehrjui (1987). After making The School We Went To, Mehrjui spent some years in France where he made a modern documentary with a story entitled Journey to the Land of Rimbaud (1982) and upon his return to Iran, he unexpectedly turned to the comedy. Although Mr. Simpleton had elements of comedy in it, The Tenants was a screwball comedy which become a box office hit and broke all the records of its time. 

In later years, this record has, of course, been broken many times. It this movie, Entezami performs the role of the owner of a huge butcher shop and lives in an apartment building while being its superintendent. The owner is killed on a train accident abroad and "Abbas Agha of the Super Meat" tries through various tricks to become the owner of the building. The other tenants put up a fight in order to become the owners of their own residence, but the building which is decrepit crumbles down during these fights as a result of an accident. Entezami plays the part of "Mr. Butcher" whose eccentric behaviors marked by avarice are easily discerned by the other tenants. His strong skillful portrayal becomes the epitome of that familiar character and becomes its very symbol and pattern. 

Entezami says, "I worked hard for this part and did a lot of research for it. I wandered about for hours and stopped by various small and big butcher shops in order to study the behavior of the butchers. With Abbas Agha so successful in his business, my impression of the part was that he had been an assistant butcher at first and then had risen to his present situation thanks to his talent for deceit and sweet talk. Now in order to own the building, he was using all his accumulated knack and smart ways rolled into one." 

Another of Mehrjui's films in which Entezami appeared was Shirak (1988) which proved an utter failure for Mehrjui. As was his usual, though, Entezami did his best, yet his acting, as a consequence of the script's weakness, was not noteworthy. He plays the part of an old water-distributor in a village in southern Iran and with the help of a youngster fight off the boars that invade the fields. 

The last collaboration of Entezami and Mehrjui was in Banoo, a movie made in 1991 which has not yet been released. This is yet another of Entezami's outstanding performances in a relatively short part resembling the part of the cunning but lovable character he excels in portraying. Khan Salar is a poor old hunchback with a protruding and damaged eye. He manages to insinuate himself into the house of a rich and single lady where his daughter and son-in-law work. He then gradually starts to steal various things from the house. Entezami at first, with his pitiful appearance, arouses pity but it soon becomes clear that behind that miserable facade he hides a diabolic nature as ugly as his looks. In this difficult role, Entezami displays a brilliant performance. In a sequence in which the servants have organized a party for the lady of the house, he plays the tambourine and sings a Turkish song (a language he does not know) and puts on such a dance that one has difficulty recognizing "the actor" behind it. The suppression of Banoo has been one of Entezami's bitter regrets in recent years. 

In addition to the script, one of Entezami's constant obsessions when choosing a part, is to find out the past records of the directors. But from the beginning of the 1980s and with the appearance of a new generation of filmmakers in the Iranian cinema, he did perform in their movies, sometimes even in their directing debuts. The result was at times positive and at times negative. In The Spider's House (1983, Alireza Davoudnejad) he played the part of a capitalist of the Shah's regime who, with a number of `counterrevolutionaries' are waiting in a villa in northern Iran for an American coup d'etat to overthrow the Islamic Republic. In this role, Entezami outshines all other actors in the movie. In Stony Lion and Eye of Hurricane both made by Massoud Jafar-Jozani in 1987 and 1989, respectively, he plays the Part of a chief of southern Iranian tribes. His role in The Angelica (1989, Muhammad Bozorgnia, Mehrjui's assistant in The Postman) was yet another Orson Welles-like performance as the Governor of Shiraz during the Qajar dynasty. 

On Bozorgnia's second film, Oil Tankers' War (1994), it was supposed that Entezami would have one of the two main roles in the film. But various difficulties made it necessary to make some changes in the script and his part was reduced to only two scenes so that he would have the time to perform a small role in The Fateful Day ( 1995, Shahram Assadi). This film which deals with a happening on the Day of Ashura in Karbala at the beginning of the Islamic era, is the only historical film whose events date back to centuries ago). 

Entezami who does not approve of historical films in principle, says "Whether in the Iranian cinema or theater, we have never had a successful historical film or play. Especially since in such works, because of their very nature, the dialogues are pompous and pretentious. In the Persian language unlike English or German, the literary and the spoken language are totally different. I usually have difficulty with literary dialogues. I cannot utter such phrases easily and I have difficulty with the make-up and costumes which go with such historical movies. I've tried to overcome my difficulties one way or another and I do not regret the experience. But I still have not changed my mind about historical films made in Iran." 

In Grand Cinema (1989, Hassan Hedayat), Entezami plays the part of Aghaiev, an Armenian immigrant who was a pioneer of the film industry in Iran. This film, which is a comedy about the rivalries during the first years of picture shows in Iran, brought Entezami the First Prize for Best Actor in the 7th Fajr Film Festival (Tehran, February 1989). 

He gave a memorable performance and his language--a combination of Persian and Turkish with an Armenian accent--was such that the character came alive. In Quiet Home (1992, Mehdi Sabbaghzadeh), Entezami plays the part of a retired newspaper serial writer whose writings in modern times have no buyers. Two unsuccessful experiences with the new generation of filmmakers were in The Shadow of Imagination (1991, Hossein Dalir) and The Toy (1993, Tooraj Mansoori, director of photography of Hamoon and Banoo). The latter, after undergoing various changes in the editing and dubbing stage (with the voice of a dubber instead of Entezami's own voice) as finally screened, but Entezami considers it to be amongst his unmemorable films. The screening of The Suitcase was also delayed for four years. This firm was made by the veteran filmmaker Jalal Moghaddam in 1985. However, because of certain interpretations, the film was finally screened in 1983 after having undergone changes in the editing and dubbing rooms and the filming of additional shots by another director. The screening proved to be a failure in every respect. 

In The Day of the Angel (1994, Behrouz Afkhami), Entezami plays the part of a man who returns to life after his death. It become a box office hit in that year and brought Entezami his second prize of the Fajr Festival. 

In recent years Entezami has performed in two important movies: Once Upon a Time, Cinema (1992, Mohsen Makhmalbaf) and The Blue- Veiled (1995, Rakhshan Bani-Etemad). Makhmalbaf's unusual film which is a complicated and satirical story of the history of the Iranian cinema, is the first film in which he has used professional actors. At first, Entezami was to play the main part of Nasir al-Din Shah who loses his heart to a movie actress. He gives up his throne and tries to become an actor in order to enter the movie sets and reach his sweetheart. Entezami had already played the role of Nasir al-Din Shah in Hatami's Kamalolmolk and this time, he wanted to enact another Nasir al- Din Shah. This time it is a different and imaginary Nasir al-Din Shah created in the mind of Makhmlbaf. Thanks to Entezami's intelligence and sharp instincts as well as his powerful and exemplary performance, Nasir al-Din Shah becomes attractive and believable in the film. Halfway through the film, when Makhmalbaf failed to find someone to play the part of Nasir al-Din Shah, he offered that part also to Entezami. Entezami hesitated at first, but when, at Makhmlbaf insistence, he accepted it, he created and enacted him in such a way that one cannot distinguish him from the real Nasir al-Din Shah one sees at the beginning of the film in a documentary which was made about his trip to Europe.     

Moreover, it is impossible to imagine that the roles are played by the same actor. After Mr. Simpleton, this was the second time that Entezami played two roles in a film. One can even say that in Once Upon a Time, Cinema, he plays more than two roles since in certain scenes which have to do with the history of the Iranian cinema, sequences of his acting in The Cow are shown. And since Nasir al-Din Shah is in love with movies, he enacts those scenes while practicing. In addition, since the Nasir al-Din Shah of the story goes through various moods and states of mind through the film, Entezami in reality plays the part of several personalities in the film. Once Upon a Time, Cinema was an ideal opportunity for a powerful and mellow actor with a great deal of experience to show his mastery and capabilities. His performance in this film is one of the peaks of his career. 

The Blue-Veiled is another film in which Entezami has a difficult part to play. His role of a lonely seventy-year-old man who owns a tomato paste factory beside fields where tomatoes are grown. His wife has been dead for three years and he falls in love with a young poor girl who works seasonally in his fields. His children relatives consider love at his age a madness. Yet the old man resists them and, by giving them his wealth, goes after his beloved. This bold and audacious film by the standards of the Iranian cinema--from the viewpoint of cultural and social relations which reign over Iranian society and its cinema--managed to pass the test thanks to the delicate handling of the theme by its director. Its star is equally successful in portraying a character who combines paternal and amorous feeling towards a young girl who is herself in need of protection and a sentimental relationship. 

Ezatollah Entezami is an icon of the Iranian cinema. If we try to imagine a series of the highest points of this cinema, his image and his films are strikingly conspicuous, although Entezami's presence in a film by Kiarostami and Bayzai, who are among the most important makers of that imaginary series may be far from likelihood. 

He will continue to do his work with love. On a shelf beside the entrance door to his house, one can always see a number of scripts which were brought to him and which he has turned down. He never hesitates to turn down offers and he always blames himself for those when he did not do so. This strength of character in our times, when most people think only of getting rich, is rather unusual. But this unusual lover continues to resist and remains choosy. He loves his work. Acting is not his source of income and means of subsistence. It is the great love of his life. When he accepts an offer, he reads the script several times, takes notes from each page, corrects, introduces changes, annotates, end writes down the gestures, the manners and the intonations which he thinks proper for each situation, each gesture and each word he utters. The scripts he works on are filled with his notes. 

As to the characters he has to portray, he searches every corner of his mind and memories and looks both inside and outside himself. He concentrates wholly on the part he has to play. He goes to sleep with it and awakes at night suddenly because of it. He literally lives with his part. Be it the vagrant Hajji Washington, or the cunning Khan Salar in Banoo, or movie buff Nasir al-Din Shah, or the old lonely lover in The Blue-Veiled. or Masht Hassan in The Cow. 

One can understand the surprise and the astonishment of the driver of the hired car--especially initially--who drove Entezami / Masht Hassan from Bandar Anzali to the village where The Cow was being filmed. No doubt his rustic looks and his state of mind were such that the driver feared that something might be wrong with him. Of course, this was the case: his cow had died!