February 14-2014
Iranian-American actress Sarah Shahi is currently living in New York City, far away from her four-year-old son in Los Angeles, as she films the third season of “Person of Interest,” the CBS crime series.
Shahi, a former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader, plays Sameen Shaw, a former government assassin.
Shahi, 34, was born Aahoo Jahansouz and claims descent from Fath Ali Shah, the Qajar monarch who reigned from 1797 to 1834.
Shahi describes the character she portrays as “incredibly hard.” The character is a cold-blooded killer who has knocked off various shady types with a bullet between the eyes. Shahi, on the other hand, is gorgeous and fashion conscious and seems a far cry from her character—a contradiction that likely helped get her the role.
In the TV show, Agent Shaw says she left medical school because she was “better at killing people than fixing them.” But the character Shaw completed medical school and had begun her residency, where she was praised for her technical skills, but came under criticism for her lack of concern for whether her patients lived or died. She was deemed unfit to be a doctor. But very fit to be an assassin.
Shahi flies back and forth as often as she can between her home base of Los Angeles (where her husband, “Shameless” actor Steve Howey, 36, lives with their four-year-old son, William Wolf) and Brooklyn, where she is renting an apartment in Williamsburg until this season’s “Person of Interest” is finished in April.
Filming takes place five or six days a week, with call times usually between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. Shahi rarely leaves the set until late in the evening.
“In the morning, I go right into hair and makeup, I have a protein-packed breakfast with sausages, bacon, sautÈed avocados, onions and mushrooms, and then I start [filming],” she explains. “Then I get home, study my lines, take a shower and repeat the process all over again the next day.”
Shahi told The New York Post, “I am loving it. The character is fantastic to play. She is so cool. I don’t think I could ever be like her, but she taps into different parts of my personality.”
In recent weeks, the tough-girl character posed as a yoga instructor to trap a potential criminal through a dating site. The character Shaw only gets along with the team’s dog, Bear. She’s not into socializing, but prefers to work on her fighting technique before shooting at people’s kneecaps with a Glock 36.
“It’s pretty fun,” says Shahi, who first took up martial arts in her native Euless, Texas, as a teen before performing musical theater at Southern Methodist University and becoming a cheerleader with the Cowboys.
A markswoman in real life (she owns a 9 mm gun), Shahi does most of her own stunts. “It’s the reason I said ‘yes’ to the show,” she says. “I’m somebody who is not afraid. I don’t have a fear of heights, so the higher up they can dangle me from that building, the better off I am!”
The one downside to starring in a successful prime-time show filmed on the East Coast is living so far away from her family. “I miss my son, terribly,” Shahi told the Post. But they keep in touch every day via FaceTime and, since “Shameless” is filmed largely in LA, the boy is enjoying plenty of time with his dad.
The couple started dating more than a decade ago, after working together on the TV show “Reba,” on which Shahi was a guest star and Howey had a regular role. “It was kind of full-on from the moment we met,” she recalls. “I don’t think I could be married to someone who wasn’t in this business.
“We talk about how our days went over the phone and we understand exactly what it’s like.”
Before the pair wed in February 2009, Shahi spent two years in Vancouver filming the Showtime lesbian drama “The L Word.” Her character, Carmen, became a fan favorite with plenty of girl-on-girl nude scenes — which, Shahi says, Howey was okay with.
“I still have quite a few followers from ‘The L Word’ who I adore,” she says. “And yes, sometimes I do get hit on. I still enjoy it. I hope I’m 92 years old and still getting hit on.
“It’s nice when you get appreciated by either sex. Whether it’s male or female, it’s validation. I wear a wedding ring, but if someone wants to tell me I have some good qualities, I’ll listen!”
As for where those qualities come from, she says, “All I can say is that, if there is anything good about me, I got it from my mom.” A Spanish-born interior designer, Shahi’s mother, Mahmonir, raised the actress and her two siblings after their Iranian dad walked out on them.
Shahi no longer has a relationship with her father, who came to the United States in 1978.
“I had a superwoman for a mom,” says Shahi. “[My dad] never gave us a penny, but [my mom] did everything she could to make us feel like we had everything we wanted.”
Her mother supported Shahi’s decision to quit college during her sophomore year in 2000 to pursue her dream of becoming an actress. Soon after, the director Robert Altman came to Dallas and cast her as an extra in his movie “Dr. T and the Women.” He spotted her talent and encouraged her to move to Hollywood.
“Mom drove me out west to Hollywood in my cherry-red pickup truck,” recalls Shahi. “She dropped me off, and I never looked back.”
When she first met Altman, she didn’t realize how famous he was. But, as soon as she arrived in Los Angeles, she heard his name mentioned regularly. “I felt intimidated,” she says. “He’d given me his contact details, but I never felt comfortable about calling him because I’d built him up so much in my mind.”
Instead, she got an agent and manager in her first week in Hollywood and started to land jobs on film and TV. That work led to more substantial, regular roles, such as parts in “Teachers,” “Alias,” “The L Word” and “Fairly Legal.”
“It’s been quite a ride,” says Shahi, who laughingly describes her career choice as “professional make-believe.”
