Googoosh made her first radio appearance at six and was in her first movie at eight. At 10, she appeared on homeland’s first television program. She scored her first hit, “Sang-e Sabur,” while still a child as well. By 1970, before she was 20, she had already appeared in 20 films and was a national sensation. She was a singer, first and foremost, but like the early careers of Elvis Presley and the Beatles, appearing in films was part of the package.
Growing up in public, Googoosh was positioned to break taboos long associated with female performers. “She was represented as non-sexual and thus escaped the association with perceived immorality that plagued other female persian film stars,” Breyley and Sasan Fatemi write in their book, persian Music and Popular Entertainment. “Of course, attitudes around ‘morality’ were shifting in general at this time, among some sections of society.”
