Christiane Maria Heideh Amanpour ( ; Persian: کریستیان امانپور, romanized: Kristiān Amānpur; born 12 January 1958) is a British-Iranian journalist and television host. Amanpour is the Chief International Anchor for CNN and host of CNN International's nightly interview program Amanpour, CNN's The Amanpour Hour on Saturdays and Amanpour & Company on PBS. She also hosts Christiane Amanpour Presents The Ex-Files with her ex-husband James Rubin on Global.
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Early life and education
Amanpour was born in the West London suburb of Ealing, the daughter of Mohammad Taghi Amanpour (Iranian) and Anne Patricia Hill (British). Her father was Shia Muslim and her mother Roman Catholic.
Amanpour was raised in Tehran until the age of eleven, when she was sent to England to attend the Convent of the Holy Cross, an all-girls preparatory boarding school in Chalfont Saint Peter, Buckinghamshire. At 16, she moved to New Hall School, a Roman Catholic school in Chelmsford, Essex.
After finishing her education in England, Amanpour returned to Iran. Her father worked as an airline executive for Iran Air, and lost his job and fortune in 1979 due to the Iran Revolution. In 1979, the family moved to the United States, where she studied journalism at the University of Rhode Island. During her time there, she worked in the news department at WBRU-FM in Providence, Rhode Island. She also worked for NBC affiliate WJAR in Providence as an electronic graphics designer.
In 1983, Amanpour graduated from the university summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism.
Career
1983–2010: Cable News Network (CNN)
In 1983, Amanpour was hired by CNN on the foreign desk in Atlanta, Georgia, as an entry-level desk assistant. By 1986, she served as a correspondent for CNN's New York bureau. During her early years as a correspondent, she was given her first major assignment covering the Iran–Iraq War, followed by a transfer in 1986 to Eastern Europe to report on the fall of European communism. In 1989, she was assigned to work in Frankfurt am Main, West Germany, where she reported on the democratic revolutions sweeping Eastern Europe at the time.
Following Iraq's occupation of Kuwait in 1990, Amanpour's reports of the Persian Gulf War brought her wide notice. Thereafter, she reported from the Bosnian war and other conflict zones. While in Bosnia, she interviewed Serb general Ratko Mladic, who would later be convicted of genocide. Because of her emotional delivery from Sarajevo during the Siege of Sarajevo, viewers and critics questioned her professional objectivity, claiming that many of her reports were unjustified and favoured the Bosnian Muslims, to which she replied:
"There are some situations one simply cannot be neutral about, because when you are neutral, you are an accomplice. Objectivity doesn't mean treating all sides equally. It means giving each side a hearing."
Amanpour gained a reputation for fearlessness during the Gulf and Bosnian wars for reporting from conflict areas.
From 1992 to 2010, Amanpour was CNN's chief international correspondent. From 2009 to 2010, she was the anchor of Amanpour, a daily CNN interview program. Amanpour has reported on major crises from many of the world's hotspots, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, Somalia, Rwanda, and the Balkans and from the United States during Hurricane Katrina. She has secured exclusive interviews with world leaders from the Middle East to Europe, Africa and beyond, including Iranian presidents Mohammad Khatami and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as well as the presidents of Afghanistan, Sudan, and Syria, among others. After 9/11, she was the first international correspondent to interview British Prime Minister Tony Blair, French President Jacques Chirac, and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. Other interviewees have included Hillary Clinton, Nicolás Maduro, Hassan Rouhani, Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel, John Kerry, the Dalai Lama, Robert Mugabe and Moammar Gadhafi.
2010–2012: ABC News
On 18 March 2010, Amanpour announced she would leave CNN for ABC News, where she would anchor This Week. She said, "I'm thrilled to be joining the incredible team at ABC News. Being asked to anchor This Week in the superb tradition started by David Brinkley is a tremendous and rare honor, and I look forward to discussing the great domestic and international issues of the day. I leave CNN with the utmost respect, love, and admiration for the company and everyone who works here. This has been my family and shared endeavor for the past 27 years, and I am forever grateful and proud of all that we have accomplished." She hosted her first broadcast on 1 August 2010.
During her first two months as host, the ratings for This Week reached their lowest point since 2003. On 28 February 2011, she interviewed Muammar Gaddafi and his sons Saif al-Islam and Al-Saadi Gaddafi.
On 13 December 2011, ABC announced Amanpour would be leaving her post as anchor of ABC News' This Week on 8 January 2012 and returning to CNN International, where she had previously worked for 27 years and maintained a reporting role at ABC News.
Since 2012: Return to CNN
A day later on 14 December 2011, in statements by ABC and CNN, it was announced that in a "unique arrangement", Amanpour would begin hosting a program on CNN International in 2012 while continuing at ABC News as a global affairs anchor.
It was later revealed that in the spring of 2012, CNN International would refresh its line-up, putting the interview show Amanpour back on air. On-air promotions said she would return to CNN International on 16 April. Her 30-minute New York-recorded show – to be screened twice an evening – would mean that the US parent network's Piers Morgan Tonight interview show would be "bumped" out of its 9:00 p.m. (Central European Time) slot to midnight (CET).
On 9 September 2013, the show and staff were moved to the CNN International office and the show is currently being produced and broadcast from London.
On 7 January 2015, Amanpour made headlines during a "Breaking News" segment on CNN by referring to the Islamic extremists who murdered the 12 journalists at Charlie Hebdo as "activists": "On this day, these activists found their targets, and their targets were journalists. This was a clear attack on the freedom of expression, on the press, and on satire".
On 28 January 2019, Christiane Amanpour and Mary Ellen Schmider and Manfred Philipp gave the Fulbright Prize for International Understanding to the German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
On 12 November 2020, Amanpour compared the Trump administration to the Nazis and Kristallnacht, saying, "It was the Nazis' warning shot across the bow of our human civilization that led to genocide against a whole identity, and in that tower of burning books, it led to an attack on fact, knowledge, history and truth. After four years of a modern-day assault on those same values by Donald Trump, the Biden-Harris team pledges a return to norms, including the truth." The Israeli government, along with some Jewish groups, called for Amanpour to apologize for this comparison. Israeli Diaspora Affairs Minister Omer Yankelevich urged an "immediate and public apology" for "belittling of the immense tragedy of the Holocaust."
Affiliations
Amanpour is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the board of directors of the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Center for Public Integrity, the International Women's Media Foundation, and the Institute for War and Peace Reporting. Since April 2015 she has served as a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for Freedom of Expression and journalist safety.
Personal life
On 9 August 1998, Amanpour married James Rubin at the Roman Catholic parish of Saint Stephen the Protomartyr in Bracciano, Italy. The wedding was officiated by Catholic priest Father Ambrose O’Farrell of the Dominican Order. Rubin is a former United States Assistant Secretary of State and spokesman for the United States Department of State during the Presidency of Bill Clinton and an informal adviser to former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and to former American President Barack Obama. In July 2009 she appeared in a Harper's Bazaar magazine article entitled "Christiane Amanpour Gets a High-Fashion Makeover".
She conceived at the age of 41, and their son John Darius Rubin was born in Columbia Hospital for Women on 27 March 2000. Having lived in London since 2000, they moved to New York City in 2010, where they rented an apartment in Manhattan's Upper West Side. In May 2013, Rubin announced that the family would return to London to work on several projects, and in October of the same year, Amanpour stated that she and her husband would be relocating to London permanently. In 2018, Amanpour and Rubin announced they were divorcing.
Amanpour was a relative by marriage to the Jahanbani family. Notable members include Commander–General Nader Jahanbani of the Imperial Iranian Air Force. He served in the Iranian Air Force for nearly twenty years until he was executed by the Islamic Revolutionaries in 1979. Khosrow Jahanbani, Nader Jahanbani's younger brother, was married to Princess Shahnaz Pahlavi. Amanpour's uncle, Captain Nasrallah Amanpour, was married to the younger sister of Khosrow and Nader.
In June 2021, Amanpour announced she had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer, had "major successful surgery to remove it", and would undergo several months of chemotherapy. In October 2025, Amanpour revealed that her ovarian cancer had returned.
