Christiane Amanpour (born January 12, 1958) is chief international correspondent for CNN.
Biography
Shortly after her birth in London, her mother Patricia and father Mohammed, an Iranian airline executive, moved the family to Tehran. The Amanpours led a privileged life under the regime of the Shah of Iran. At age 11, she returned to England to attend first the Holy Cross Convent School in Buckinghamshire, England, and then the New Hall School, an exclusive Roman Catholic girls' school. Her family had to flee Iran after the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Christiane moved to the United States to study journalism at the University of Rhode Island.
After graduation, she worked for NBC affiliate WJAR in Providence, Rhode Island. In 1983, she was hired by CNN. In 1989, she was posted to Frankfurt, West Germany, where she reported on the democratic revolutions sweeping Eastern Europe at the time. However, it was her coverage of the Persian Gulf War that followed Iraq's occupation of Kuwait in 1990 that made her famous. Thereafter, she reported from the Bosnian war and many other conflict zones. From 1996-2005, she contracted with CBS to file four to five in-depth, international news reports a year as a special contributor on that network's newsmagazine program, 60 Minutes. These reports garnered a Peabody Award in 1998, adding to the Peabody she was awarded in 1993.
Based out of CNN's London bureau, Amanpour is one of the most recognized international correspondents on American television. Her willingness to work in dangerous conflict zones has reportedly made her one of the more highly (if not the highest) paid field reporters in the world. She speaks English, Farsi, and French fluently. Forbes magazine has named her one of The 100 Most Powerful Women
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Personal life
The daughter of Mohammed Amanpour and Patricia Amanpour, her sister, Lizzy Amanpour is a producer for British television broadcaster, Channel 4.
In 1998 she married James Rubin, who at the time was spokesman for the US State Department. A son, Darius John Rubin, was born in the year 2000. The family reside in London, where Rubin works for Sky TV
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Notes
She is a director on the board of the Committee to Protect Journalists
Amanpour called current events in Iraq a disaster on a CNN show with Larry King in January 2006