Iranian actor Homayoun Ershadi has passed away at the age of 78 after battling cancer.
The Pear Tree actor rose to international fame with his ground-shattering performance in the late Abbas Kiarostami's Palme d'Or-winning Taste of Cherry (1997), which follows the story of a hopeless man looking for someone to bury him after his planned suicide.
Ershadi earned global recognition from the film, and it proved to be the stepping stone for his remarkable decades-long acting career.
Born in central Isfahan in 1947, Ershadi was a student of architecture before he entered the world of entertainment.
He was also part of Hollywood productions, such as The Kite Runner (2007), A Most Wanted Man (2014), and had a brief appearance in Zero Dark Thirty (2012).
Iran's House of Cinema confirmed his death and offered condolences to the artistic community, a prominent figure of theatre, cinema and television, with government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani calling him a "noble and thoughtful actor of Iranian cinema".
Homayoun Ershadi's passing is a significant loss to both Iranian and international film and theatre.
