Name: Maz Jobrani: Building Cultural Bridges, One Laugh at a Time
Uploaded: 2025-04-11T07:58:25.000Z
Duration: 4 min 1 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

To-infinitive

A lot of immigrant parents do not want their kids to be comedians and actors.

They want them to be lawyers or doctors or engineers.

The moment I realized that you only have one life and you can't live your life for your parents, you have to live your life for yourself, is when I decided that I'm going to pursue this a hundred percent.

When I was a kid, I loved playing soccer, so I thought I'd be a professional soccer player.

Then, I started playing baseball, I said, maybe I'll be a professional baseball player.

And then, when I was 12, I ended up trying out for the school play and I fell in love with being on stage.

I was born in Iran - Tehran, Iran - and I left Iran when I was six years old.

I did undergraduate college at UC Berkeley, where I studied political science, with a minor in Italian, and then, after that, I moved down to Los Angeles to start a Ph.D. program and I dropped out right away because I wanted to pursue acting and comedy.

and that was many years ago and here we are today.

I believe that comedy can serve as getting across a serious message as well.

“Jimmy Vestvood: Amerikan Hero,” I describe it as the Persian “Pink Panther” meets “Borat.”

It's got a message of showing Iranians in a very different light than we're used to seeing Iranians.

The Iranians that I know are good people; they enjoy life, just like I'm sure people from all over the world do.

The Zoroastrian religion has a saying, and that's the original religion of Iran, and the saying is, “good words, good thoughts, and good deeds.”

Now, I'm not really religious myself, but if you can live by those,

I think it leads you to good places in life.

If I lived back in Iran, I don't think I would necessarily be doing what I'm doing now.

Acting and comedy is not really an option.

I think the thing that's good about the West and about America is the idea that that you should pursue what you love doing.

I'm very appreciative of the opportunities that were afforded me here in America.

Ever since I was a kid, I remember they would give us tea.

They didn't even think about the fact that it had caffeine.

Every house has a tea pot, tea kettle, going all day long.

So, one of the best breakfasts in the world is you have Iranian tea, you put in plenty of sugar, you sweeten it up,

and then you get the Persian bread, then you put Persian cheese, which is really just French cheese or a goat cheese, it's just heaven in your mouth.

When my hair first started falling out, I was very worried.

and I thought about using Rogaine for a while, but then I ended up not using it, because they said it might have side effects, and here I am, nice and bald.

When you don't have hair on your head, you tend to want to have some kind of facial hair.

and these young girls were walking, wherever they were, in the store, and they saw me and they go, “Hey, sir, I love your mustache!”

I had such a struggle getting to do what I want to do in life, meaning that I had to really battle my parents

to get to where I am, that usually the first thing I say is, I say, “I'm lucky because I get to do what I love doing.”

I really firmly believe that if you are lucky enough to find what you love doing, and then are even luckier to get to do it, and then are even luckier to make a living doing it, I mean, that's the trifecta, man!