In March 1958, their divorce was announced. After a brief career as an actress, and a liaison with Italian film director Franco Indovina, Soraya lived alone in Paris until her death.Soraya was the elder child and only daughter of Khalil Esfandiary Bakhtiary (1901–1983), a Bakhtiari nobleman and persian ambassador to West Germany in the 1950s, and his Russian-born German wife Eva Karl (1906–1994).