Sarah Shahi

Aahoo Jahansouz "Sarah" Shahi ‎ (born January 10, 1980) is an American television actress and former NFL Cheerleader. She played Kate Reed in the USA legal drama Fairly Legal from 2011-2012 and currently stars as Samantha Shaw on the CBS crime drama Person of Interest. She has also appeared as the female main role in Life, and in supporting roles in The L Word and Alias.

Early life

Shahi was born and grew up in Euless, Texas. She is the daughter of Mah Monir, an interior designer, and Abbas Jahansouz Shahi. Her father is from Iran, and her mother is from Spain. She has one older brother and a younger sister. Her father's family left Iran two years before the Iranian Revolution. Her birth name, Aahoo (Persian: آهو‎) means "gazelle" in Persian. She is a descendant of Fath-Ali Shah Qajar of the Qajar Dynasty, who ruled Iran from 1797-1834.

Shahi adopted Sarah as her name in second grade, after hearing the song "Sarah", because she was "tormented" by other children. At her father's behest she grew up speaking Persian, in addition to English. Shahi's parents began entering her in beauty pageants at the age of eight. Her parents divorced when she was 10. Shahi attended Trinity High School, where she was captain of the volleyball and basketball teams, and Dallas' Southern Methodist University, majoring in English and Theater. Shahi won the Miss Fort Worth pageant in 1997; hoping to become an actress, she joined the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders 1999–2000 squad despite not having cheered before, and appeared on the cover of the squad's 2000 calendar before moving to Los Angeles.