“I really, truly live in my suitcase—seriously,” announces Golshifteh Farahani, the Iranian actress of M for Mother fame. The perennial globetrotter is calling from Paris, where she spent the summer onstage as a rather breathtaking Anna Karenina, and will soon celebrate the release of her latest film, Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson. Alongside Adam Driver, she plays half of a New Jersey couple whose relationship serves as a quiet reflection of life’s daily rhythms. “You want to be like them,” she says of the characters’ honest appeal. “You want to have a very simple, beautiful, poetic life like them, away from complications.”
In some ways, it’s the sort of lifestyle that Farahani seeks for herself—not only through her craft, which she compares to meditation (“For me, acting is living a moment, some moment of absolute truth,” she says), but in the far-flung trips she books between jobs. “I like to retreat from the world,” she says. “Far, far away, I go where nobody really asks you who you are or what you do because it doesn’t really matter—that’s where I can find myself.” Here, Farahani reveals her rules for a wonderful wellness escape. Consider it inspiration to rest and reset over the holidays.
On the bohemian life:
“There are places in the world that somehow look like each other. The same person you meet at Burning Man, you meet in Ibiza, you meet in Goa or Bali or Bahrain, Australia, Montauk, Sri Lanka—it’s the same group of people, you just meet them all over the place. It has been years that I [have been going] to these bohemian communities. You just play music, you dance, you sit, you eat well, you can swim, you can go on walks in the mountains—where you can be close to nature.”
On seaside beauty:
“As far as beauty goes, I’m literally like a boy—I don’t do much with myself. But I do try to be close to the ocean, where my hair gets curlier and curlier. I’ll wash it less with shampoo, so it’s the natural salt water at work, then I try to keep my skin moist. I’m a very natural person into natural looks.”
On staying oily:
“I love natural products like coconut oil, or other oils in nature that are really, really good on your hair, on your skin, especially when you’re in nature and you can stay oily. I love most essential oils, and I love woody oils like Palo Santo—woody smells and woody oils.”
On herbal remedies:
“I prefer to eat mostly vegetarian, but I’m not strict. My mother is a raw foodist for 15 years now. The funny thing is, I became vegetarian first in our family, and then she turns into this super raw vegan. But now she knows so much about all these ancient herbs, she’s really like a professor. Do you know about cordyceps? My husband goes to Bhutan a lot, so we get those worms and it’s one of my favorite things. I had one this morning, and I can feel how amazing it is, this worm that turns into a plant.”
On eating green:
“The places where I feel happiest are where I can pick what I eat from the earth. I think that is the most luxurious thing. For me luxury is not having private jets and houses, but to have a garden where whatever we eat is alive and has the energy of the earth. That for me is heaven.”
On active living:
“I think I’ll leave surfing for my next life. It’s funny, my husband is a proper surfer. I ski because I was born and raised in the mountains, and I love snowboarding but I don’t surf. I do swim a lot, and we do stand-up paddleboard. Sometimes I catch some little waves that way if we go into the ocean, but I don’t like getting hammered. I don’t have that tolerance. You have to be tough to do that, and I’m not that tough—at least not yet.”