Zhaleh Kazemi (3 April 1943 – 31 March 2004) was an Iranian television producer, news anchor, and painter. She was also a voice actress for Persian-dubbed films in Iranian cinema.

Zhaleh Kazemi was born in Teheran with the real name of Zahra Kazemi-Azad in a cultured family. Her parents (Abbas and Nisa) separated when Zhaleh was nine years old, and at the age of ten, she had to live with her older brother, who was an employee of the oil company in Abadan.

She spent her childhood and adolescence in the city of Abadan. Since she was a teenager, she was interested and participated in the theater, poetry and literature programs of Abadan local radio.

Her other brother, Houshang Kazemi, worked as an active dubbing artist. At the age of eighteen, she traveled to Rome, where the dubbing of films in Persian language had been started by some Iranians living in Italy since the early 1950s. During her six-month stay there, Zhaleh Kazemi worked and gained experience in dubbing alongside Iranian dubbing pioneers such as Manouchehr Zamani, Nosrat Karimi and Hossein Sarshar.

In the 1960s, also called the Iranian golden age of dubbing, she stood at the top of this profession and was the most reliable female voice actor in dubbing industry and one of the few first-rate dubbers who, in addition to voiceover, also worked as dubbing manager.

Among the characters Zhaleh Kazemi had voiced-over were movie stars such as Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), Ingrid Bergman, Ava Gardner, Jennifer Jones, Joan Woodward, Leslie Caron, Elizabeth Taylor in 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)' and 'Who's Afraid of  Virginia Woolf? (1966)', Shirley MacLaine, Julie Andrews in 'The Sound of Music (1965)', Vanessa Redgrave, Ali MacGraw in 'Love Story (1970)', Julie Christie in 'Doctor Zhivago', Faye Dunaway, Barbra Streisand, Mia Farrow in 'The Great Gatsby', Liza Minnelli and Sophia Loren in all her movies.


Zhaleh Kazemi dubbing in Love Story (1970)

Zhaleh Kazemi continued to study at the same time as working. She received a bachelor's degree in political science from National University, and a master's degree in education from the University of Southern California (with a scholarship from Radio and television).

She also worked for Iranian National Radio and television in addition to reciting poems, reading narration and dubbing. Her most famous television program was "You and television", which continued as "Shoma va Sima" in the years after the revolution.

Later, Zaleh Kazemi continued this same activity in the programs Today's Literature, World Literature, Classical Literature, and magazines of Tasvire Zaman and Honar. In the last years of her career in television, she worked as the producer and executive director of several television programs.

Activities after the revolution

After the Islamic Revolution, Zhaleh Kazemi, as one of the famous and popular television figures before the revolution, had no place on the Islamic Republic of Iran's television.


Zhaleh Kazemi dubbing in The Hours (2002)

Later, with some changes to come, she tried to work as narrator and announcer outside the television. Some of these activities were broadcast on television. She read the text of some programs about cinema, worked as narrator in several documentaries, and voiced over Iranian actors in several films, and participated in the dubbing of several foreign films and series.

Following the success of the subtitled version of Alejandro Amenábar's "The Others" in Tehran cinemas, she dubbed for Nicole Kidman. The last time Zhaleh Kazemi used her gentle, soothing speaking voice as a dubbing artist, was in The Hours, for Nicole Kidman.