Kathreen Aziz Khavari ( fa, کاترین خاوری; born June 23, 1983) is an American actress, writer, and producer who first gained attention when her sketc
Brain of Terror
in which she played eleven different characters, went viral after it was featured on ''Upworthy''. She is best known for her role as Patricia on

HBO Home Box Office (HBO) is an American premium television network, which is the flagship property of namesake parent subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is ba ...

's '' Insecure,'' Samantha on HBO's '' Big Little Lies,'' and for voicing

Ms. Marvel Ms. Marvel is the name of several fictional superheroes appearing in comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character was originally conceived as a female counterpart to Captain Marvel. Like Captain Marvel, most of the bearers of the Ms. M ...

in various

Marvel Entertainment Marvel Entertainment, LLC (formerly Marvel Enterprises) is an American show business, entertainment company (law), company founded in June 1998 and based in New York City, New York (state), New York, formed by the merger of #Marvel Entertainment ...

animated series and video games.

Early life

Khavari was born and raised in Oakland, California to Iranian immigrant parents. After graduating from Skyline High School, she attended the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

, studying public health, then later earned a Master's degree from the

London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) is a public research university in Bloomsbury, central London, and a member institution of the University of London that specialises in public health and tropical medicine. The inst ...

in Control of Infectious Diseases.

Career

Khavari realized her childhood passion of acting was unwavering, and upon returning home from London, she took small acting jobs while working in the public health field. She made her off-Broadway debut in “You Are Dead, You Are Here” at the Here Arts Center in New York. In response to Trump's " Muslim Ban," Khavari made headlines at the premier of ''Big Little Lies'' when she wore a dress that read "My Iranian Immigrant Mother Teaches Your Kids How to Read". Khavari's satirical sketches, which she posted to her YouTube channe
Brain of Terror
touched on various social justice issues including gun control, Islamophobia, women's reproductive rights, and police brutality against black men in America. In 2022, she was the voice of Badyah Hassan in the

Netflix Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a fil ...

animated series Dead End: Paranormal Park. She was also announced as the voice of a new Transformers robot, Twitch, in the

Nickelodeon Nickelodeon (often shortened to Nick) is an American pay television television channel, channel which launched on April 1, 1979, as the first cable channel for children. It is run by Paramount Global through its List of assets owned by Param ...

series Transformers: EarthSpark. Khavari’s

Oakland Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third largest city overall in the Bay A ...

-based pilot
Embrace
debuted at the 2020

Sundance Film Festival The Sundance Film Festival (formerly Utah/US Film Festival, then US Film and Video Festival) is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,66 ...

in their Indie Episodic category. The pilot also won the Episodic Pilot Competition Jury Award at

SXSW South by Southwest, abbreviated as SXSW and colloquially referred to as South By, is an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and conferences organized jointly that take place in mid-March in Austin, Te ...

“For its originality of voice, its depiction of characters and relationships that are both enigmatic and appealing, as well as telling an absorbing story in a world unseen on television at the moment.”

Filmography

Film

Television

Video games

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Khavari, Kathreen Living people American people of Iranian descent American voice actresses Writers from Oakland, California Television producers from California Actresses from Oakland, California 21st-century American actresses 21st-century American screenwriters 21st-century American women writers American women television producers Screenwriters from California American television actresses University of California, Berkeley alumni Alumni of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine 1983 births