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Iranian actor Homayoun Ershadi had just finished reading The Kite Runner - a novel he loved - when he got a surprise call from a London casting agent asking him to audition for a role in the Hollywood film based on Khaled Hosseini's bestselling book.

Two weeks later, the 60-year-old architect-turned-actor was on a plane to war-torn Kabul, where the movie's director, Marc Forster, was auditioning scores of Afghan kids and adults to be in the $20-million (U.S.) film.

Ershadi - a charming, but solemn man with hawkish features and the long, delicate fingers of a surgeon (or architect) - remembers how he was struck by his first look at Kabul, a once-vibrant metropolis whose life has been snuffed out by successive decades of tanks and tyranny.

"I had thought, listening to the news, that lots of money was going to Afghanistan now. But I didn't see any sign of it," Ershadi says.

"When I came out of the airport, the first thing I saw is a school on the street in a tent. The people are friendly and kind, but there is just so much poverty," says the father of two and grandfather of five, who got his first acting role in the 1997 Iranian film A Taste of Cherry.

Then Ershadi tells the story of meeting Forster and promptly trying to convince the award-winning director (Finding Neverland, Monster's Ball) that he wasn't the best candidate to play Baba, the strict, principled father in The Kite Runner.

"The first thing I told him was that, physically, I'm not at all similar to Baba. In the book, he is a giant of a man, 6-foot-8, with big hands. A burly guy," Ershadi says. "I'm a foot shorter than that. I asked him, 'Why did you choose me? I'm not the right person. I love that book. I don't want to ruin the book.' But Marc looked me in the eye, and said, 'Homayoun. Read me your lines.' So I read three times my lines. And he said, 'Okay. That's it.' Then I realized maybe he saw 6-foot-8 in my eyes."

Ah, yes, those eyes. Black as midnight. When he speaks, the eyes never waver. They are piercing, giving his words (and performance) instant gravitas that transforms him into the giant of a man that the fictional Baba was.

Ershadi is a natural storyteller and he weaves another yarn around a chance meeting - which led to his career change - while he was sitting in his car at a stoplight in downtown Tehran.

"Suddenly, somebody tapped on my window," he chuckles. "I thought they were looking for directions, so I rolled down my window. He introduced himself as Abbas Kiarostami [the iconic Iranian filmmaker/photographer]. Then he said to me, 'I want to make a film. Would you like to be in it?' I said, 'Yes, why not?' "

Ershadi auditioned and got the lead role in A Taste of Cherry, a film that went on to win the Palme d'or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1997, launching Ershadi's professional acting career.

"Like I did with Marc, I asked Abbas, 'Why did you choose me? I'm just a man. Not a professional actor.' And he said, 'Don't worry. If something happens and it's not a good film, it's not going to be your fault. It's going to be my fault.' And I wasn't nervous any more. His words gave me confidence."

Ershadi earned his architecture degree at the University of Venice. In 1980, after the revolution in Iran, he and his wife moved their young family to Vancouver, where Ershadi lived and worked at an architectural firm until the early 1990s. He then moved back to Iran after his marriage broke up and his kids had grown, to be near his mother, father and various siblings. Ershadi's two children live in Vancouver, a place he visits often to see his five grandkids.

Ershadi says he considers himself a blessed man. "I got into acting by accident. But, two times, I've been especially lucky. First, when I became an actor. And second, when I was chosen for this role," he says, referring to The Kite Runner. The film, in theatres this Friday, is highly anticipated by the legion of fans of Hosseini's debut novel, which came out of nowhere in 2004 to shoot to the top of bestseller lists around the globe.

Hosseini's story is a haunting tale of friendship, family, betrayal and redemption that spans three decades of Afghan unrest, including mujahedeen strife and Taliban terror. It revolves around two childhood best friends, Amir and Hassan, whose friendship ends after a brutal rape. Amir and Baba move to America as the Soviets invade Afghanistan. Twenty years later, Amir returns to his homeland to find himself and try to forgive his past actions.

A huge challenge for Forster was recruiting boys - and he wanted non-actors - to play the children Hassan (Ahmad Khan Mahmoodzada), Amir (Zedkiria Ebrahimi) and Sohrab (Ali Danish Bakhty Ari), who speak Dari in the film (one of two main tongues spoken in Afghanistan). He eventually found them after several trips to Kabul and other parts of Afghanistan.

Another hurdle was location scouting. The novel, set in Afghanistan, could not be shot there because of the violence and virtual lack of a film industry. Forster settled on San Francisco and Kashgar, a thriving film centre in western China. Shooting wrapped in December of 2006 and the film was initially slated to be released last month.

But concern for the safety of the young Afghan actors - whose families feared reprisals because of the film's depiction of a culturally inflammatory rape scene - forced the release date back to this Friday. (A few weeks ago, Paramount Pictures temporarily transported the boys to the United Arab Emirates.)

Ershadi says the kids who act in The Kite Runner were "fantastic" to work with. "They are very intelligent, and learn very fast," he says. "We had only one rehearsal in each scene with the kids. I think if you rehearse too much, you lose the spontaneity."

Forster has said he cast Ershadi for a similar reason - the actor's heart shines through his eyes.

"Ershadi was challenged with creating a man who is fiercely intelligent and decent, yet unable to connect with the son who he sees as so unlike him - only to come around years later to find a connection with him and express his love," he has said. "When I met Homayoun, I immediately felt there was an emotional quality in him that was very important for the character of Baba. If he didn't have that ability to make people care for him in his most crucial scenes later in his life, then his strong characterization in the beginning of the film would not work. Homayoun makes that transition beautifully."

Ershadi says one of the many highlights of making this film was having the opportunity to meet the book's author, Hosseini, who travelled to the set in China with his aged father. Actor and writer quickly were able to relate to each another, perhaps because both have made radical transitions mid-career. Hosseini is a physician. His second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, is also topping charts.

Ershadi also credits screenwriter David Benioff (Troy, Stay) for doing an admirable job of adapting the book for the screen. "It could not have been easy," the actor observes. "It spans three decades, and crosses continents. So much had to be left out to turn a 400-page book into a two-hour film.

"But whether you read the book and then see the film - or vice versa - it doesn't matter. Because the film is very different from the book. And the film talks for itself."

Late bloomers

It's a rare thing for an actor to be discovered late in life. So outside of sports - think about athlete-turned-thespian O.J. Simpson or Dean Cain, who signed a pro football contract in his early 20s - most performers don't have much experience beyond odd jobs. Yet Homayoun Ershadi isn't quite the only screen actor with a real off-screen résumé.

When Dennis Farina started playing cops (and gangsters) in the early 1980s, he had lots of experience to draw on; he spent 18 years as a Chicago police officer before his second career took off.

At the age of 18, Jason Lee took up a very Californian career path: pro skateboarder. Doing tricks in a Sonic Youth video with Spike Jonze changed all that, though. He and Jonze acted together in an indie film a few years later, and by his mid-20s Lee was starring in Kevin Smith's Mallrats.

Alan Rickman spent his student years learning graphic design and ran his own London studio for years before winning a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1972, at the ripe age of 26. But Rickman didn't make it from stage to Hollywood for another 15 years - fittingly, in Die Hard.

Alex Bozikovic