Pouri Baneai

Pouri Baneai was born Seddigheh Banayi in Arak, Iran on October 11, 1940. She lived there for four years before she and her parents moved to Tehran. She had seven sisters and one brother. She acted in more than 85 Iranian feature films between 1965 and 1979. During her years of acting before the Iranian revolution, she cooperated with famous Iranian directors such as Mehdi Reisfirooz, Samuel Khachikian, Masoud Kimiai, Farrokh Ghaffari, and Fereidoun Goleh. Her most memorable performances are in Iranian new wave films such as Masoud Kimiai's Qeysar in 1969 and in Fereydun Gole's The Mandrake. Her first feature film was The Foreign Bride, directed by Nosratollah Vahdat. Pouri didn't have any academic education in acting and because Vahdat was one of her distant relatives, he suggested her to act in his film. In 1967 she co-starred with Behrouz Vosoughi, a famous Iranian actor at the time. They had many co-operations and in 1970 they acted in Qeysar, known as one of the major films and a symbol of Iranian new wave. She also co-starred with other Iran Cinema superstars of the time such as Mohammad Ali Fardin, Naser Malek Motiee, Manouchehr Vosugh, Iraj Ghaderi, Ali Nasirian, and Parviz Sayyad. Most of the Farsi-language Iranian movies were dubbed in those days and famous actors and actresses had specific dubbers. Zhaleh Kazemi was Pouri Banayi's dubber. Some of her films like The Mandrake and The Falconet in addition to Qeysar and Ghazal are considered as milestones in her performances before the 1979 revolution which put a partial end to this type of Iranian cinema. She also acted in some foreign-produced English-language films such as Missile X: The Neutron Bomb Incident (1978) directed by Leslie H. Martinson in which she co-starred with Peter Graves and Curd Jurgens. In another film directed by Fereydun Gole, named The Moon and a Murmur (1977), she co-starred with John Ireland and Mickey Rooney. Jean Negulesco choose her and Behrouz Vosoughi to play the roles of a couple in his last film The Invincible Six (1970). Jun'ya Sato, the Japanese director chose her for the lead actress in his 1973 adaptation of the manga, Golgo 13. Most Iranian actors and actresses fled Iran after the 1979 revolution, because they had acted in sexy films before the revolution. Pouri Banayi chose to stay behind, but she was soon imprisoned in the Evin Detention House for over one year. She was released late in 1980, but never acted in cinema again despite that she was never technically banned from acting in films. She was engaged to Behrouz Vosughi, but they didn't officially get married. One of Pouri's sisters is Aki Banayi (Akram Banayi) who is is a singer and presently lives in Los Angles.