Actor Navid Negahban

An actor’s career is defined 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 experience 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 recent box office hit “American Sniper” (2014). A self-described character actor, Negahban 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 premiere at the Hoboken International 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 brutal 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 airports. People do double-takes, but can’t quite place why they know his face. One incident occurred during a trip to Israel when Negahban was interrogated in a room for several hours.

“The entire time I was sitting 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, describing Vossoughi as the “Iranian 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, Negahban’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.

Navid Negahban (center) as Abu Nazir in “Homeland”

“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 allowed 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 answer 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 nothing. You’re just a grain of sand.”

With so many roles out there and only so much time, Negahban’s a pretty busy guy. In between shooting films, he’s done voice work on the “Assassin’s Creed” and “Call of Duty” video game franchises and has had numerous guest spots in TV shows such as “Arrow,” “Person of Interest” and “The Mentalist.” Bouncing between television and film has given Negahban insight into the differences between working in both of those mediums.

“When you work on a TV show, if you’re a guest star, you’re coming in and out,” he said. “Those, to me, are some of the toughest jobs because you work three or four days, coming in to something that’s already established.”

He speaks of the need to be sharp on set and observing the chemistry between characters. “What can I touch? What can I not touch?” he said he asks himself during a shoot. “I love when I’m in those situations because I have to react very quickly. When you’re working on a film, you have more time -- time to prepare, time to study.”

One upcoming film project that exemplifies the different timeline for movies is “Baba Joon” (2015), a story about an Iranian-Jewish agricultural village. For the role, Negahban needed to be able to speak Hebrew, so he flew in early.

“I spent a month there just to learn the language and be able to handle the dialogue,” he said. “You have the luxury of time when you’re doing film. On TV, it’s quick.”

Showing no signs of slowing down, Negahban’s next project is a role in the film “Damascus Cover,” a spy movie in which he plays a Syrian intelligence officer and which is set to premiere later this year. With such a diverse portfolio and passion for character, anything could be next for Negahban.

“I don’t know where I’m going to go”, he said of his story thus far, “but the journey has been very nice.”