The Daily Star - Stay Tuned
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The Daily Star, Oneonta, N.Y., Friday, May 22, 2015 2 By Andrew Sawyer TV Media A n actor's career is de- fined by the roles they play. A great character actor inhabits those characters to give them life on screen and brings a little piece of that ex- perience to everything that comes after. Navid Negahban is one such actor with many credits to his name, and audiences may best recognize him as the villainous Abu Nazir from Showtime's "Homeland" or from the re- cent box office hit "American Sniper" (2014). A self-de- scribed character actor, Negah- ban took some time out of his busy shooting schedule for an exclusive interview with TV Media. The film he was working on was "Price for Freedom," which will have its world pre- miere at the Hoboken Interna- tional Film Festival Friday, May 29, in Middletown, New York. Based on the true story and book by Dr. Marc Benhuri, the film chronicles the creation of an underground railroad to help people escape from a bru- tal dictatorship in Iran in 1979. Benhuri's story drew Iranian- born Negahban to the role, and he was inspired further when they had a chance to meet. "Marc himself answered some of the questions I've had my entire life," Negahban said. "You play a character, you want to fall in love with that character and I fell in love with Marc." One not-so-loveable character Negahban played that is probably his most well known is that of Abu Nazir on "Homeland." He said he gets recognized all the time when he's out, but especially at air- ports. People do double-takes, but can't quite place why they know his face. One incident oc- curred during a trip to Israel when Negahban was interro- gated in a room for several hours. "The entire time I was sit- ting there," he recounted, "I was thinking that I am Abu who has been captured in this interrogation room. What would he do? How calm would he be? How would he answer." Eventually, he explained that he was shooting a television show and the rest of the trip went smoothly. The dramatic drive grabbed hold of Negahban from a very young age, seeing him perform in plays as young as eight years old. He cites Behrouz Vossoughi, one of the most legendary Iranian actors, as a great inspiration for him, de- scribing Vossoughi as the "Ira- nian Marlon Brando." "I grew up with him," Negahban said. "I would skip school just to go and see his movies." He eventually got to meet Vossoughi and counts meeting his hero as one of the most special moments in his life. It was his passion for acting that prompted his move from Iran when he was 20. After spending some time in Turkey as well as Bulgaria, Negah- ban's star began to rise while he lived in Germany and worked at a theater company. Times were tough, though, and he admitted to sleeping in the streets some nights if he missed the train. His love of acting, however, kept him at it. "Since I was a kid, I wanted to be too many things," Negahban said. "I wanted to be an astronaut, I wanted to be a police officer, I wanted to be a cowboy. Nobody can be all of those things in one lifetime. I get a chance to be all of them. Each of those characters al- lowed me to discover the world around me. Educated me. Because each of them made me go and study that character." "For all of them, there are questions that you are always searching for the answer to," he continued. "It's not the an- swer that's important, it's the journey. The journey that you're taking to find the answer. That's what makes you a better person. It makes you be less full of yourself than thinking you're the man, because when you look around, you see that in the big picture you're noth- ing. You're just a grain of sand." Robynwood Home 2 x 2 coverstory Navid Negahban as Abu Nazir in "Homeland" The answer is the journey A chat with television and fi lm star Navid Negahban By Adam Thomlison TV Media Q: Can you tell us about the nice gentleman in the Trivago commercials? A: As a matter of fact, I can tell you a surprising amount about Trivago Guy (as he has been dubbed in the media). The series of commercials intended to introduce the German travel company to American audiences has be- come a career-defining moment for the actor, an ad in- dustry talking point and, according to some, a landmark in male-female relations. Houston-born Tim Williams was a struggling actor whose biggest role was a bit part in an episode of "The Sopranos" in 1999, when he landed the male lead in a German romantic-comedy film ("In Search of an Impotent Man," released in 2003). His temporary move to Berlin turned permanent, and it proved to be good for his acting career. He appeared in a number of German shows and films before being cast as the talking head in commercials for the Dusseldorf-based travel website Trivago. Indeed, his somewhat controversial look in the first Trivago commercials was partly due to his commitment to a German soap opera, which required that he keep his shaggy haircut. The rest of his look matched: baggy pants, unbuttoned shirt, stubbly beard. However, Williams' Trivago Guy got a makeover for the most recent series of commercials. It's a little neater, and the hair is shorter (since his German soap gig came to an end). The ads made him into an unexpected icon of middle- aged-male fashion. His fame led some in the ad industry to question whether he was outshining the brand he was supposed to be representing. More interestingly, the scru- tiny his appearance received led a columnist with the To- ronto-based "Globe and Mail" to question whether "mid- dle-aged men are subject to the same uncharitable judg- ment women of a certain age endure." An avid traveler himself, Williams is happy with all the attention his ads have brought, even though he has per- sonally taken a lot of criticism for his character's look, which he says he had little to do with. "Just so everyone knows, there is and are stylists all the time around you while you shoot a commercial." Have a question? Email us at questions@tvtabloid.com. Please include your name and town. Personal replies will not be provided. hollywoodQ&A Fly Creek General Store 1 x 6 Brandon's Feed & Seed 2 x 2 $ $( )! $ %&* "*!%&% ((( ( $ ) ) " $' ) ' ) ÁaÄV¶ÖjVjF?ÁajV+jÍÄ &% #! $"