Susan taslimi graduated in theatre and acting from the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Tehran. Her first film was The Ballad of Tara in 1979, by the famous Bahram Beyzai. She is called by many "the most important actress in the history of Iranian cinema and theatre".
Susan Taslimi, the magnetic country woman who talks with birds in Bashu, the Little Stranger, no longer lives in Iran, but her presence has left a scintillating trail inits cinema. Ironically, Taslimi was often in trouble from the Islamic authorities for having too much presence. In The Ballad of Tara, her first film with Bahram Bayzai, she was criticised because "her hair created electricity." In Death of Yazdgerd, she was accused of being more important than the male characters, which was taboo. Bayzai argued with the producer of Bashu as to where her name would appear on the credits. "I was told that a man's name should figure first," recounts Bayzai. "A film by Bahram Bayzai with Susan Taslimi." She played an iron-willed farm widow once again in Ali Zhekan's The Mare, a poor woman who destroys her 13-year-old daughter by marying her off, agianst her will, to a man three times her age.
In the 1980s Susan Taslimi was black listed by the Islamic regime of Iran and all of her films were banned.