Millie Bobby Brown’s Princess Elodie may be sentenced to death in Damsel, but the cast of the Netflix fantasy film is to die for. As produced by the Stranger Things icon herself, Brown is joined in the next original movie destined to smash the streaming charts by numerous A-listers and familiar faces.
Black Widow’s Ray Winstone is the most cockney king in all of fiction, Angela Bassett does her thing as a surprisingly nice step-mother, and Robin Wright features as Elodie’s evil mother-in-law, subverting her role as the kind-hearted Buttercup in The Princess Bride. Not to mention Love, Simon‘s Nick Robinson as Henry, who might not be the fairy tale prince charming he seems.
But who voices the all-important role of the dragon in Damsel, the lava-breathing beast that Elodie is forced to survive when her new in-laws throw her into its cave? Did their voice sound familiar? I wouldn’t be surprised, as you’ve no doubt seen this actress in numerous movies and TV shows.
Where else have I seen and heard Damsel star Shohreh Aghdashloo?
The voice of the dragon in Damsel is provided by Iranian/American actress Shohreh Aghdashloo. The 71-year-old, at the time of writing, has been a prolific star on the big and small screens for decades now, having earned herself a Primetime Emmy win and an Academy Award nomination.
Although her acting credits reach back to 1976, Aghdashloo’s career was blasted onto a whole other level following 2003’s drama film House of Sand and Fog, for which she received her Oscar nom. Since then, the actress has turned up in a flood of franchises movies, everything from X-Men: The Last Stand to Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters to Star Trek Beyond, to major TV shows such as 24 and The Expanse. Most recently, you might have heard her as the voice of Gozer (physically played by Olivia Wilde) in Ghostbusters: Afterlife or as Bellafrancesca Lobo in Renfield. She’ll next be seen in Max’s Batman spinoff series, The Penguin.
Portraying a dragon in Damsel is just one small drop in an ocean of a film career for Shohreh Aghdashloo, then, but she nonetheless threatens to steal the show (if Brown wasn’t so good, that is) as the mythical creature who may not be as monstrous as she appears. Damsel, as based on the book of the same name, is available to stream on Netflix.