Bahar Soomekh

Actress Bahar Soomekh. She was born in Tehran and moved to Los Angeles with her family in 1979, to escape the Iranian revolution. After graduating from U.C. Santa Barbara with an environmental studies degree, Soomekh had a corporate job for a few years, but studied acting feverishly until she could quit her job, and devote herself to her passion full-time. Her first parts came on television at the age of 27, on such crime dramas as "Without a Trace," and on two episodes of "JAG." She had her first big film role in the 2004 Academy Award-winning melodrama "Crash," as Dorri, a Persian daughter who provides a bridge from her father's native culture to their adopted one in the United States In 2006, Soomekh had another noticeable role in a big Hollywood film, as the translator to Philip Seymour Hoffman's Owen Davian, the dangerous weapons dealer and villain in the action-thriller "Mission: Impossible III." That same year, Soomekh landed a main character role in the third movie of the hugely successful "Saw" horror franchise, "Saw III," as Lynn Denlon, a doctor who is kidnapped and forced to deal with the evil will of Jigsaw, a.k.a. John, Mr. Saw himself. Soomekh would reprise the part in 2007, in "Saw IV." Nor forgeting her degree, Soomekh works for both Green Cross and the Rainforest Action Network (RAN), and started her own production company to make environemntal films.