Simon Abkarian

French-Armenian actor Simon Abkarian garnered the most attention in his career with his portrayal of Armenian-American painter Arshile Gorky in Armenian-Canadian director Atom Egoyan's "Ararat." Though the film is largely about the Armenian genocide in Turkey, its subject matter is more about the ways truth is represented within or through art.

In 2004, Abkarian played a Lebanese Muslim chef who has an affair with an Irish-American microbiologist, played by Joan Allen, in the expressionist art house film "Yes." "Casino Royale," a James Bond film, helped Abkarian gain even more international and mainstream exposure; he played a Greek contractor for the main villain, Le Chiffre, and his international crime organization, in opposition to James Bond, played by Daniel Craig.

The following year, Abkarian, along with notable international actors Catherine Deneuve and Chiara Mastroianni, voiced the main characters in the animated French-language version of "Persepolis," based on Marjane Satrapi's graphic-novel memoir about growing up during the Iranian Revolution. Mastroianni played Marjane, while Deneuve and Abkarian played her mother and father. Though the film was well received, Sean Penn took over the role of the father in the English version of the film, so unfortunately Abkarian's work was obscured in countries that didn't show the French version.

In "The Army of Crime," Abkarian had the lead role as Armenian exile Missak Manouchian, poet and founder of a communist resistance group in the French Resistance during the Nazi occupation of France.