Iranian media report veteran actor Mashayekhi dead at 84

TEHRAN, Iran – Iranian media are reporting that veteran film and theatre actor Jamshid Mashayekhi has died at age 84.

A Tuesday report by the semi-official ISNA news agency says Mashayekhi died in a hospital in Tehran after a lengthy illness. He had been occasionally hospitalized in recent years.

Mashayekhi appeared in nearly 100 films and some 70 TV series and plays beginning in the late 1950s when he quit the military academy to join stage.

In March, the outspoken Mashayekhi prompted an outcry when he claimed that the late Iranian wrestling hero Gholamreza Takhti committed suicide in the 1960s and was not murdered by forces of the former regime that collapsed in 1979 as had been rumoured.

Mashayekhi is survived by his wife, one daughter and two sons.