Topol actor biography john

By John Nathan. Chaim Topol spent the vast majority of his acting life known for his Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, and much of it being asked if he minded. He would go on to play it, he reckoned, about 2, times more. Jewison who despite his name and the fact that he directed what remains the biggest Jewish hit in cinema history was not himself Jewish cast Topol in the role of the milkman from the Shalom Aleichem stories instead of opting for the much more obvious choice of Zero Mostel, the Broadway star who had created the role in New York.

Competition for the role included Rod Steiger, Danny Kaye, and in an era when authenticity casting was not even a notion let alone a requirement, even Frank Sinatra. But by then Topol had claimed the role as his own after producers of the first London production in invited him to audition. Convincing as Tevye, who was 30 or more years older than the actor playing him, was a remarkable feat.

Omer topol

However over the following decades Topol would literally grow into the character. In that London production, he was at last the age he should have been when he first played Tevye. He had grown by then not only in years but authority. Yet he had lost none of the sweetness that defined his performance and which Jewish characters had usually lacked, especially when played by non-Jewish actors.

Indeed it took a performer of immense charisma to eclipse the stereotype of the Jew as conniving and calculating, and of course with Shylock and Fagin obsessed with money too. Although Moody would be associated with the Fagin role as much as Topol was with Tevye, for English speaking productions at least Moody was much the more diverse actor.

One example of this was when Topol was cast in the ill-fated West End show Ziegfeld in , when he was brought in by producer Harold Fielding to save his disastrously received show about the American impresario. The show crashed anyway. When he returned a few days later, his first entrance on the stage was greeted by a standing ovation during which the audience reportedly cheered.

Topol was not a man known for his modesty but in that account, he was probably doing himself a disservice in that version of the story following the Six-Day War.