Paul Chahidi
Giv Paul Khatib-Chahidi, known professionally as Paul Chahidi, is an Iranian-born British actor. He has won a Theatre World Award and a Clarence Derwent Award along with having Tony and Olivier noninations.
Early life
Paul Chahidi was born in Iran to an Iranian father and a British mother. His parents met while they were students studying at the Sorbonne in Paris. Chahidi was raised in Iran until the family left during the Iranian Revolution in 1979 and settled in the United Kingdom. Chahidi grew up in Summertown, Oxford and attended the Dragon School and Winchester College. He went on to graduate with a masters in Arabic and Persian from Trinity College, Cambridge. He went on to train as an actor at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.Career
Chahidi is an associate artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company. He appeared at Shakespeare's Globe and on Broadway in all-male productions of Twelfth Night and Richard III. He was nominated for both an Olivier award and a Tony Award and won a Theatre World Award and Clarence Derwent Award for his portrayal of Maria in Twelfth Night, where he appeared alongside Mark Rylance's Olivia in 2013. He played defence minister Nikolai Bulganin in Armando Iannucci's 2017 historical comedy The Death of Stalin.He had a recurring role in the BBC Three television comedy series This Country, in which he played the Rev. Francis Seaton, a vicar who tries to help the characters created and played by siblings Charlie Cooper and Daisy May Cooper. For this role, he was nominated for the Royal Television Society Award for best Comedy Performance.