Ali Asghar Sharif

Ali Asghar Sharif AKA Sharif, was born in 1923 in Mashhad, Iran. His father Hassan Sharif was a wealthy landowner and a Khan of an area near Mashhad called "Sharif Abad' (developed by Sharif). When Ali Asghar reached the age 6 his father passed away, Ali Asghar was the only child so he was supposed to inherit his father's wealth. His father's clerk, being an opportunist saw a window to help himself to riches and wealth and decided/forced Ali Asghar's mother to marry him. The young Ali Asghar was the only person standing between the Clerk and the wealth so the clerk decided to get rid of him. Ali Asghar's aunt helped the little boy to flee from Mashhad to Tehran, once in Tehran the aunt arranged for the little boy to work in Tehran's big bazaar as errand boy. Ali Asghar rapidly learned the trade of doing business in bazaar, but something else was calling out to him, once he saw a performance of a street musician which captured his heart and he decided to follow his passion for acting and art of performance. In the early years of the Iranian national radio, he was one of the first to help establish this radio for Iran. Soon he came in contact with other young, passionate and talented people such as Jamshid Mashayekhi and Monir Taslimi. He started to write screenplays for movies, The first movie he starred in was The bloody Moonlight (1956) co-starring Mushegh Sarvari, his other hit was The hand of faith (1959) co-staring Hamideh Kheirabadi. In 1960's Ali Asghar wrote several screenplays for cinema and a few theatre plays, after the Iranian revolution in 1979, he played in a few post-revolution movies usually as an character actor. From early 1990's Ali Asghar he start battling with the Alzheimer disease, in the beginning it wasn't diagnosed as such, the diagnosis came in 2001. By this time he didn't recognized the most people around him. in 2010 he passed away in town of Karaj, near Tehran.