Religion: Iran Bars Spy Film Actor From Travelling Abroad

An Iranian actor has been barred from leaving Iran after closely guarded details emerged of her starring role with Leonardo DiCaprio in a forthcoming Hollywood spy thriller about a hunt for an al-Qaida leader.

Golshifteh Farahani was told by officials that she was not allowed to travel when she tried to board a flight at Tehran's Imam Khomeini airport. She is believed to have been bound for the US to discuss future film roles. Farahani, 25, recently finished filming her Hollywood debut film, Body of Lies, directed by Ridley Scott, which is due to be released by Warner Brothers on October 10.

Her role in the thriller had been widely rumored among Iranian cinema aficionados, but only became common knowledge after the Internet Movie Database website posted the film's cast and official trailer. The trailer includes a shot of Farahani, apparently without hijab, standing behind DiCaprio. Her appearance was reported by the newspaper Etemad.

It is unclear who ordered Farahani's travel ban, but Iranian news websites attributed it to the culture and Islamic guidance ministry (Ershad), which oversees all cultural activities. According to some reports, the ministry has issued rules requiring actors to seek its permission before accepting roles abroad.

Ershad has a track record of trying to control Iranian film output and has banned the screening of several internationally acclaimed works by some of the country's best-known directors.

Calls to Farahani's mobile phone by the Guardian went unanswered yesterday.

Farahani, who has been acting since she was six and is the daughter of a prominent actor and theatre director, has long been famous in her native country, having won the best actress award at 14 in the international section of Iran's Fajr film festival for her role in Under the Pear Tree.

She appeared in Bahman Ghobadi's Half Moon, which won the golden seashell award at the 2006 San Sebastian film festival, and in M for Mother, which was chosen to represent Iran in the best foreign film section of this year's academy awards.

The pre-release publicity for Body of Lies, which also stars Russell Crowe, has not specified her role. She is understood to play Ayesheh, a nurse with whom Roger Ferris, a CIA agent played by DiCaprio, falls in love while pursuing Suleiman, a leading al-Qaida operative, in Jordan.

Parts of the screenplay - written by William Monahan and based on a novel by the Washington Post journalist David Ignatius - are said to have been specially adapted for Farahani's character, to avoid infringing Islamic rules on female modesty. The Iranian news website Farda reported that her contract included a clause requiring that all scenes show her with full hijab.