Zhaleh Olov

Zhaleh Olov — Biography

Zhaleh Olov, born Shokat Olov and also known in Turkish as Jale Alev, spent more than half a century as an Iranian actress, becoming one of the mother figures of Iranian cinema, and is counted among the pioneers of dubbing in Iran. She is remembered for the Persian voices of Disney cartoons and for Aunt Leila in the series Once Upon a Time. She was also a poet, and died in Tehran on 23 December 2024 at the age of 97.

Her work in poetry-reading groups led to her joining radio in 1948 as a poet and announcer. That year she made her first film, The Tempest of Life, and helped found the radio programme Story of the Night. She graduated from the Tehran Acting Academy in 1949 and adopted the name Zhaleh after appearing in the musical Daughter of the Sun. She played leads until the late 1950s, then appeared in more than 100 films, often as a mother, among them Dash Akol, Ghalandar, The Window, Wood Pigeon and Shirin and Farhad. In 1953 she moved into dubbing and voiced stars such as Sophia Loren; she gave Persian voices to Cinderella, Pinocchio, Sleeping Beauty, One Hundred and One Dalmatians, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and The Aristocats. After the revolution she turned to television with Amir Kabir and directed the dubbing of the series Oshin; her last television work was Mokhtarnameh.

She received the Order of Culture and Art and was honoured at the 2010 Chehre-ye Mandegar (Lasting Figures) ceremony.