Ms. Close, it's not every day that a Hollywood star like you gets to star in an Israeli series that's also set in Iran.

A sign of how much more international the industry is now thinking?

Yes, I would sign that.

And of course that is also thanks to the global streaming services.

For example, 20 non-English language series are available on AppleTV+, which also shows “Tehran”.

And it's great that a small Israeli series that was initially produced for the domestic market suddenly gets such an international platform.

But don't you get offers from all over the world on your table every day?

Not that, but every now and then it is.

But this one was special.

It came out of the blue and my agency wasn't sure if I was even interested in it.

But I watched the first season and read the scripts, and I was immediately won over.

Also, I love doing things for the first time.

Starting with learning the language, which was a huge challenge.

You actually studied Farsi for the series?

I wish I had had six months to do this.

But even with less preparation, my goal was to at least speak Farsi well enough for native speakers to believe I was fluent in the language.

And I think after two months I got it pretty good in terms of pronunciation and accent.

However, I couldn't actually translate what I was saying, so in the end they were memorized sounds for me.

But of course my language coach was on set, and in the scenes where I had to speak Farsi, I also had a button in my ear so that I could repeat them with guidance if necessary.

Her role is that of an inscrutable British psychologist involved in secret service operations in Iran.

Why are you actually cast so often when it comes to embodying ambivalent or anti-heroines?

Good question.

As an actress, of course, these are the ones that fascinate me the most.

As a craftswoman in my profession, I feel it is my job to fathom the gray areas of a character and to emphasize their humanity.

Because no matter how deep the abyss: Whoever condemns his character as an actor does not embody it sincerely.

The first few years of your film career, which only began in your mid-30s with “Garp and How He Saw the World”, you played mainly motherly roles.

Maybe shady, often unsympathetic characters were also a way to resist labels and clichés?

Perhaps.

Certainly in some cases.

But above all I have always looked for truthfulness.

In fact, no one is all good or all evil.

Everyone moves in the gray areas of life.

Movie stars are all over the place these days, but when you did The Shield or Damages in the mid-2000s, you were an exception.

.

.

Even earlier.

Immediately after Garp, my first feature film, I was offered a television production: an incest tale that initially put me off, but then turned out to be brilliantly written and extremely suspenseful.

My agent warned me that doing so would ruin my cinema career, which actually hadn't even started yet.

Film and television were two completely different professions in the USA at the time.

But I didn't care.

With the English, my colleagues were also equally visible on the screen, the stage and the screen.

That's how I always kept it.

If you think back to the first years of your career, your studies, your beginnings in the theater, your first films – is the passion you had for acting then still the same today?

Absolutely.

I'm just as passionate about this job today as I was then - and I'm amazed that at almost 75 I'm still able to practice it with so much variety.

My curiosity for the characters is the same as it was then, and the fact that I am much more experienced in my craft now makes the passion almost greater.

The only difference is that I don't really like being away from home anymore.

Me and the rest of my family now live in one place;

that's why I'm drawn back there more than in the past.