Iranian-born Swedish actress Pars vows to travel to Oscars

STOCKHOLM — Iranian-born Swedish actress Bahar Pars, who hopes to share an Oscar for best foreign film, says she and fellow actor Rolf Lassgard “have decided to travel” to the Academy Awards ceremony despite the confusion around U.S. President Donald Trump’s travel ban.

Pars, who got Swedish citizenship in 1995, said by travelling to the prestigious Feb. 26 ceremony in Los Angeles “the effect will be a lot bigger.” The 37-year-old actress holds both Swedish and Iranian passports.

“Standing there together and holding hands is a statement in itself” on Trump’s temporary immigration ban against seven majority-Muslim countries, including her native Iran, she told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Pars, who stars in Sweden’s entry “A Man Called Ove,” told the AP she hopes she will get into the United States but said “there’s always a risk of being turned away and that isn’t very glamorous.”

Based on a novel of the same name, the dark comedy tells the story of a recently-widowed, grumpy old man played by Lassgard who seeks to end it all when new neighbours — played among others by Pars — change his life.

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“The film is about prejudices,” she told the AP, adding that she felt “so privileged to have Swedish citizenship.”

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Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark, contributed to this report.

David Keyton, The Associated Press