Marc Headley had just released his explosive book about the deepest, darkest secrets of Scientology, “Blown for Good: Behind the Iron Curtain of Scientology,” when he met actress Nazanin Boniadi on Feb. 19, 2010.
He was at a wedding party in LA with a group of other ex-Scientologists when a beautiful brunette approached him, wanting to know more about Chapter 28 of his book — the one that detailed the casting process of finding Scientology poster boy Tom Cruise a girlfriend.
Headley had worked for 15 years for Scientology’s LA production company, Golden Era Productions, where he saw a handful of short audition tapes — young, gorgeous women answering questions about their devotion to Scientology and their feelings about Cruise — in late 2004.
“This girl wants to know all about thse audition tapes,” Headley tells The Post. “She’s like, ‘When did this take place?’ And I’m like, ‘I don’t know, November, December 2004.’
“She starts crying, gets up and runs out of the room. She was going out with Tom Cruise in December of 2004 — we were still auditioning girls then. That was Naz. That was the first time I ever met Naz.”
“Based on her reaction,” says Headley, assuming Boniadi didn’t know other women were in the picture at the time of her relationship, “she was in love with the dude.”
According to a Vanity Fair article published last year, Boniadi, 25 at the time, auditioned for the coveted role of Cruise’s gal pal following his split with Penelope Cruz (who wouldn’t convert to Scientology) and before he married Katie Holmes.
The magazine said that the pair dated for a few months and even lived together before Cruise had a friend dump Boniadi for him. Apparently, she wasn’t affectionate — or famous — enough. Plus, top Scientologist David Miscavige reportedly didn’t like her.
Boniadi, a former Scientologist, has never spoken publicly about her relationship with Cruise and, since that bombshell article, she’s kept a low profile — a “CSI” guest spot here, a “Grey’s Anatomy” cameo there.
But this fall she has suddenly emerged as a talked-about character in “Homeland,” one of the season’s hottest shows, forcing her back into the limelight.
When asked by The Post about her ensuing notoriety, and whether she’d prefer to be known for something else, Boniadi says with a laugh, “Yes, please — my work!”
In “Homeland,” Boniadi plays Fara Sherazi, a smart, young Iranian Muslim analyst working with the CIA and the newest protégée of Saul Berenson (Mandy Patinkin). It’s a role she can relate to.
“It’s a groundbreaking role. How often do we see a Muslim woman who is intelligent and independent, and has a voice of her own and is career-driven on American TV? And she really is all of those things,” Boniadi, 31, tells The Post. “She chooses to wear a headscarf, yes, but she is a Muslim who also believes in the concept of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We both have a strong urge to fight for justice.”
Like her character, Boniadi is originally from Iran, where she was born in Tehran in 1982 after the Iranian Revolution. Concerned the climate was growing oppressive towards women, her parents — her mother is a hairstylist, her father a former journalist turned business owner — moved the family to London when Boniadi was only 20 days old.
Growing up, the actress played violin and electric organ, and performed ballet and in high school plays. In 1999, she left the UK for the US, where she enrolled at the University of California Irvine’s School of Biological Sciences in pursuit of becoming a medical doctor. (Her mother, reportedly once a practicing Scientologist, was already living in Orange County at that point.)
“My primary urge in life was to help people,” Boniadi says. “I was always fascinated with science, and being Persian, it’s instilled in us at a young age to follow something very academic in our career.”
She graduated with honors from UCI in 2003 after winning a competitive undergraduate research award for her work on heart transplant rejection and cancer.
“We really liked having her in the lab,” recalls Christopher Hughes, Ph.D., the chair of UCI’s Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry. “She was very engaging. I think that’s why she would have been a good doctor. She has a lot of empathy, she’s very good with people, which isn’t always the case in science.”
But her life took a turn after graduation.
“I was very successful and I graduated with honors. And then I called my dad, who still lives in London, and I said, ‘Dad, thanks for college but I’m going to go act now,’ ” Boniadi laughs. “It didn’t go over very well. He thought I was absolutely out of my mind for turning my back on something that was so stable.”
According to the Vanity Fair article, Boniadi’s relationship with Cruise took place from November 2004 to January 2005 — between her college graduation and her first acting role in 2007.
Church of Scientology official Greg Wilhere reportedly approached Boniadi, a member who had a Scientologist boyfriend at the time, telling her she’d been selected for an important secret mission that would entail meeting dignitaries and possibly help save the world.
As part of the mission, she is said to have undergone a month-long process of “auditing” (a confidential process in which a trained Church member questions another member), during which she revealed personal information, including details about her sex life, to Wilhere. She was also reportedly told to lose her braces (six months before they were scheduled to be removed) and the red highlights in her hair.
According to the article, she was then shown her boyfriend’s confidential audit tapes, the contents of which caused her to dump him.
Suddenly, she was available and whisked off to New York for a dream date with Cruise (and Wilhere third-wheeling).
The first week in November, the three reportedly went ice skating in Rockefeller Center, had dinner at Nobu and took a tour of the Empire State Building.
After that weekend, the two were said to be inseparable. (Although the grooming process continued, with Cruise supposedly encouraging her to file down her incisor teeth.) She even moved into his LA home and got to know his kids. But their bliss was short-lived.
(The Church of Scientology tells The Post: “The entire story appearing in Vanity Fair is hogwash. There was no project, secret or otherwise, ever conducted by the Church to find a bride [via audition or otherwise] for any member of the Church. Never.”)
According to an unnamed Vanity Fair source, Boniadi was punished for breaking a confidentiality agreement she signed before the New York trip: After she confided in a friend about her breakup, she was made to clean bathrooms with acid and dig ditches in the middle of the night.
“From what I know, the Vanity Fair article is super, super watered down,” Headley says. Of her reported punishment, he says: “Oh yeah, that’s a no-brainer. That’s a totally normal thing.”
Though Boniadi confirmed to The Post that she is no longer a Scientology member, she refused to speak further on the topic: “I’d rather not talk about that. It’s something that I’m not happy to . . . Like I said, I have so many positive things happening in my life, it’s a shame not to talk about that.”
A couple years after her alleged Mrs. Cruise tryout, Boniadi was back auditioning — this time for Hollywood acting gigs.
“She came in and auditioned against hundreds of actresses for these very competitive roles,” recalls “General Hospital” casting director Mark Teschner.
In 2007, he cast Boniadi as nurse Leyla Mir in the short-lived soap spinoff “Night Shift.”
“She came in and she just blew us away. She just had something so magnetic and compelling about her that we knew we were going to hire her from her first read.”
When “Night Shift” went off the air, she was one of the few actors who transitioned onto “General Hospital.”
Teschner says he was never contacted by the Scientology community discouraging him to cast the young actress — and had never heard about a relationship with Cruise until he read the magazine article: “That’s a prime example [of], if you have the talent and ability you can transcend any kind of short-term notoriety and carve out a substantial career,” he says.
During her run on “General Hospital,” Boniadi landed a 2007 movie role in “Iron Man” as reporter Amira Ahmed.
She left the soap in 2009 and returned to England to study acting at the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London.
A couple of guest spots on prime time series like “24” and “Suits” followed, as did a recurring role on “How I Met Your Mother.”
These days, the actress is living in LA. When asked if she has anyone special in her life, she demurs and says she enjoys practicing yoga and spending downtime with her friends watching movies. She’s also an outspoken activist and spokesperson for human rights organization Amnesty International.
And with her growing TV and film career, Boniadi’s days as a contestant in Scientology’s twisted game of matchmaking seem far behind her.
“I don’t think Naz ever wanted [her relationship with Cruise] to get out,” Headley says. “I think what happened is she told one person and it spread. She doesn’t want to be famous for this.”