Angelina Jolie’s name has started trending on the internet, however, it’s not for anything that the 45-year-old actress herself has done. Rather, her name is appearing in search engines across platforms as new portals and sites pickup the news that her Iranian ‘zombie’ lookalike has just been sentenced to 10 years in prison.
According to a report by the Guardian, 19-year-old Sahar Tabar (whose real name is Fatemeh Khishvand) was arrested a year ago after finding fame on the internet (specifically on Instagram) for her extreme makeover that was modelled after the ‘Maleficent’ actress. After her pictures went viral, the teen gained almost 500,000 followers as she marketed herself as having had surgery to look as she did in the shocking images. At the time, back in 2017, she had said that she had had over ’50 surgeries’ to look like the famous actress.
However, fans (and critics) ultimately picked up on the obvious distortion around Tabar’s images and heavily questioned the legitimacy of her claims as well as images. The young Iranian herself seemed to have confirmed that the images were a result of a mixture of prosthetics, makeup and editing. In an interview published by the Russian state-owned news website Sputnik on 4 December 2017, she is quoted as having said:
“No, of course. This is Photoshop and makeup. Every time I publish a photo, I paint my face in an increasingly funny way. It is a way of expressing yourself, a kind of art. My fans know that this is not my real face.”
Unfortunately, as a result of her art, she was arrested last year for “blasphemy, inciting violence, gaining income through inappropriate means and encouraging youths to corruption” and has since been cleared of two (‘blasphemy’ and ‘inciting violence’) of the four charges brought against her. Since the courts ruling, Tabar has had to deactivate her account. In April this year, Tabar is said to have contracted Covid-19 but her appeal to be released on these grounds has since been rejected. According to the report by the Guardian, the teen remains hopeful that the remaining two charges will be dropped while Iranian journalist and activist Masih Alinejad even appealed to Jolie to help get Tabar released.
*Cover image credits: Instagram / @angelinajolie_offiicial / @sahartabar_officialfanpg