[10] Boniadi played supporting roles in several major Hollywood film productions, such as Charlie Wilson's War, Iron Man, and The Next Three Days.

[citation needed] She played Nora, a love interest for Neil Patrick Harris's character Barney Stinson, on the sixth season of the hit CBS show How I Met Your Mother in 2011.

[18][19] She narrated the soundtrack to the 2014 Iranian documentary film, To Light a Candle, made by Maziar Bahari and focusing on the state sanctioned persecution of Baháʼís in Iran.

[21] From 2018 to 2019, Boniadi received critical acclaim for portraying the series regular role of Clare Quayle in the Starz espionage drama Counterpart.

She was a spokesperson for Amnesty International USA (AIUSA), with a focus on the unjust conviction and treatment of Iranian youth, women and prisoners of conscience, from 2009 until 2015.

[33] In December 2010, she initiated an Amnesty International petition for Iranian film directors Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof, who had been convicted of "propaganda against the state".

[35][36] On 3 June 2011, Boniadi joined Sarah Shourd in a rolling hunger strike and wrote an article in support of the Free the Hikers campaign, pertaining to the imprisonment of Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal in Iran.

[37] On 9 April 2012, Boniadi returned to her alma mater UCI in support of the Education Under Fire campaign, calling for an end to state sanctioned discrimination and persecution of Baháʼís in Iran.

[38] Boniadi delivered the keynote closing remarks at the 2012 XX Factor, Amnesty International USA's annual town hall meeting on women's rights, in Washington, D.C.[39] In December 2012, Boniadi worked with Roxana Saberi to launch an Amnesty International petition and campaign to free wrongfully imprisoned filmmaker Behrouz Ghobadi, brother of acclaimed filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi, in Iran.

[20] In April 2019, she was interviewed by CBC News Network anchor Natasha Fatah about the fate of human rights lawyer, Nasrin Sotoudeh, recently sentenced for up to 38 years in Tehran.

[54][55] In an informal session of United Nations Security Council in November 2022, she denounced as a "myth" the idea that the hijab was a part of Iran's culture.

She questioned China's intentions in playing the role of mediator between Iran and Saudi Arabia, warning of the danger of "autocracies taking that top spot in the world".

Boniadi was told that her dental braces had to be removed and that her red hair highlights had to be corrected; she was also encouraged to end her relationship with her longtime boyfriend.

[71] According to Boniadi, Cruise initially overwhelmed her with the intensity of his affection but she was isolated from her family and the two of them were rarely alone, always surrounded by an entourage of Scientologists.

[75] On 10 May 2017, American journalist Tony Ortega reported on FBI testimony that Boniadi had given in January 2010 regarding her relationship with Cruise through the Church of Scientology.

[76] In a later interview with the Los Angeles Times, Boniadi described her role in Counterpart as cathartic and therapeutic, saying "sometimes there are personal traumas that you don't ever talk about publicly but you pour it into your work".