Homayoun Ershadi could keep us concerned about a man who offered little explanation of himself. His restraint makes Taste of Cherry deeply moving, though there are stretches when we need more than he chooses to give.
Fi1m perspective
In Taste of Cherry (1997), Homayoun Ershadi drives around Tehran as Mr Badii, looking for someone to bury him after his planned suicide. Ershadi plays him with a reserve that makes us wait for an explanation. Abbas Kiarostami lets the conversations recur, so we have time to consider both the request and the difficulty of answering it. A more demonstrative performance might have settled our feelings before anyone else could speak. Ershadi makes us keep listening.
This was Ershadi’s debut, made after Kiarostami spotted him in traffic and cast him as a non-professional. That history can tempt us to credit the face and forget the performance. What his restraint allows Kiarostami to do is leave Badii’s reasons uncertain without making us indifferent to what happens to him. We were moved by Taste of Cherry because Ershadi kept us worried about Badii through conversations that could otherwise have reduced him to a problem to be debated. His contribution is essential to a demanding film we rate highly.
The later work put that quietness to different uses. As Baba in The Kite Runner (2007), he played a dignified father figure, a role that brought him wider international recognition. Intellectual and paternal authority were recurring parts of his work in Iranian and Western productions. He also played Aspasius in Alejandro Amenábar’s Agora (2009) and Abdullah in Anton Corbijn’s A Most Wanted Man (2014). A non-professional debut grew into a career of more than 90 films, with plenty of directors finding a use for his undemonstrative manner.
There is a cost to the reticence we admire. In Taste of Cherry, the repeated exchanges can grow frustrating when Ershadi offers so little help with Badii’s motives. We sometimes want an explanation simply to make the prospect of staying beside him less difficult. Yet he gives us enough to care about, and Kiarostami is right to trust him without asking for a more emphatic performance. Start there, with time to listen; it is a poor choice for an evening when patience has already run out.
Biography
Homayoun Ershadi, also credited as Homayon Ershadi, was an Iranian actor. He was born on 26 March 1947 in Isfahan, Iran, and died on 11 November 2025 in Iran, aged 78.
Ershadi studied architecture at Ca' Foscari University of Venice and worked in that profession before entering acting in middle age. He was discovered by director Abbas Kiarostami while sitting in his car in traffic in Tehran and cast in the leading role of Taste of Cherry (1997).
He appeared in international films including The Kite Runner (2007) as Baba, Agora (2009) as Aspasius, Zero Dark Thirty (2012) as Hassan Ghul, A Most Wanted Man (2014) as Abdullah, and Ali and Nino (2016) as Safar Khan Shirvanshir. Ershadi won a Sepanta Award in 2017 for best actor in a short film.
