Nasir Malek Motiʿi (1930-2018), iconic actor/director of the Pahlavi-era commercial cinema.  Malek Motiʿi began his acting career in the theater and as a voice-over artist in dubbed foreign features.  His first on-screen role (playing himself) was in one of the earliest post-war productions Variety Bazaar (Parviz Khatibi, 1949).  His first character (and paying) role was in Vagrant (Mehdi Raʾis Firuz, 1952), which immediately transformed him into a fan favorite.  He would go on to act in more than one hundred feature films over the course of his career, collaborating with nearly every major talent in front of and behind the camera during that time.  His most famous portrayals were of working-class toughs who sought to uphold social and moral ideals that audiences at the time highly valued but also believed to be under threat from Pahlavi-era elites’ modernist vision. He parlayed his on-screen fame into directorial work but he continued to be best known for his acting prowess, for which he won back to back industry awards in 1970 and 1971.  Initially, his film career survived the Islamic Revolution of 1978-9.  In 1982, he and some of his fellow stars of the pre-revolutionary commercial cinema were featured in the wartime blockbuster The Liminal Ones (Iraj Qaderi).  However, the controversy that their on-screen presence generated led to an unofficial ban from appearing in film or television.  Malek Motiʿi transitioned to the workaday world until he played a bit role in the 2014 film Negar’s Role (ʿAli ʿAtshani).  His funeral in 2018 would draw enormous crowds, a testament to his enduring fame.