Nazanin Boniadi (; , ; born 22 May 1980) is an Iranian-British actress and activist. Born in Tehran and raised in London, she went to university in the United States, where she landed her first major acting role as Leyla Mir in the medical drama General Hospital (2007–2009) and its spin-off General Hospital: Night Shift (2007). Since then, she has played Nora in the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother (2011), Fara Sherazi in the Showtime spy thriller series Homeland (2013–2014), Esther in the historical drama film Ben-Hur (2016), Clare Quayle in the Starz sci-fi thriller series Counterpart (2017–2018), Zahra Kashani in the action thriller film Hotel Mumbai (2018), and Bronwyn in the Prime Video fantasy series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2022–present). Boniadi was an Amnesty International spokesperson from 2009 to 2015 and served as a board member for the Center for Human Rights in Iran from October 2015 until February 2021. Her focus has been on youth and women's rights. Early life Boniadi was born in Tehran, Iran, in the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution. Less than a month after her birth, she and her parents left Iran and applied to become political refugees in London. She performed violin and ballet as a young girl. She attended an independent school in Hampstead and earned a bachelor's degree, with honours, in biological sciences from the University of California, Irvine (UCI). At UCI, she won the Chang Pin-Chun Undergraduate Research Award for molecular research involving cancer treatment and heart transplant rejection. She was also Assistant Editor-in-Chief of MedTimes, UCI's undergraduate medical newspaper. In 2009, she studied a contemporary drama short course at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. Career Boniadi changed her career path from science and started pursuing acting in 2006. Her first major acting role was as Leyla Mir on the daytime drama General Hospital and its SOAPnet spin-off series General Hospital: Night Shift, making her the first contract actor to play a Middle Eastern character in American daytime television history. She is also the first actress born in Iran to ever be on contract on an American soap opera. She was nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Daytime Drama Series in 2008 for her role in General Hospital. Boniadi has also played supporting roles in several major Hollywood film productions, such as Charlie Wilson's War