Arian Moayed

Arian Moayed is an Iranian-American actor, screenwriter, and director whose Broadway career spans from 2011 to 2023. Born on April 15, 1980, in Tehran, Iran, Moayed emigrated with his family to the United States in 1986, settling in Glenview, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. He grew up in a household he has described as practicing Muslim, and speaks Persian. After graduating from Glenbrook South High School in 1998, he earned a bachelor's degree from Indiana University in 2002, where he performed in works by Samuel Beckett, Carlo Goldoni, and William Shakespeare.

Following his graduation, Moayed relocated to Manhattan. In 2002, he and director Tom Ridgely, his former roommate at Indiana University, co-founded Waterwell, a theater, education, and film company based in New York. The organization, which focuses on socially conscious and civic-minded work, has produced more than a dozen stage productions. Among Waterwell's projects, Moayed played the title role in a dual-language production of Hamlet and produced Blueprint Specials, a musical about a forgotten war staged aboard the Intrepid with a cast of veterans.

Moayed made his Broadway debut in 2011 playing Musa, an Iraqi gardener, in Rajiv Joseph's Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, appearing opposite Robin Williams. The role earned him a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Play at the 65th Tony Awards, a Drama League Award nomination for Distinguished Performance, and a Theatre World Award. He returned to Joseph's work in 2016 in Guards at the Taj, playing Babur alongside Omar Metwally as Humayun. That performance earned Moayed a 2016 Obie Award presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Village Voice, as well as a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Ensemble Performance.

In 2017, Moayed portrayed Richard Saad in Stephen Karam's The Humans, a production directed by Joe Mantello and produced by Scott Rudin that played at the Roundabout Theater, the Helen Hayes Theater, the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater on Broadway, and the Hampstead Theatre in London. The production won the Tony Award for Best Play at the 70th Tony Awards. Moayed returned to Broadway in 2023 in A Doll's House, playing a domineering husband, a role that earned him a second Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actor in a Play.

On television, Moayed starred as private equity investor Stewy Hosseini in HBO's Succession from 2018 to 2023, receiving Primetime Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series in both 2022 and 2023. His screen credits also include Todd Spodek in Netflix's Inventing Anna, Agent P. Cleary in the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), and appearances in the Disney+ series Ms. Marvel (2022) and Wonder Man (2026).

As a writer and director, Moayed created the short film Overdue, which premiered at the Cinequest Film Festival, and Day Ten, a film about the aftermath of September 11, 2001, starring Omar Metwally, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. Through Waterwell Films, he wrote and directed The Accidental Wolf, an Emmy-nominated and Webby-nominated short-form series featuring Kelli O'Hara, Laurie Metcalf, Denis O'Hare, and more than 70 Tony nominees. Moayed's father works as a banker. He lives in New York City with his wife, Krissy Shields, and their two daughters.