Angels, demons and Israelis

May 31, 2009 - 10:43 AM by David · Leave a Comment
Filed under: General, Movies, Pop Culture, Profiles

Ayelet Zurer - the Julia Roberts of Israel.

These are heady times to be an Israeli actress. Ayelet Zurer is on billboards throughout the world along with Tom Hanks for their film Angels and Demons. And she’s been receiving some great reviews.

And now Liraz Charhi has been cast in Fair Game, director Doug Liman’s drama about outed CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson. Naomi Watts already has been cast as Plame. Sean Penn plays her husband, ambassador Joseph Wilson.

But she’ll have a hard time achieving the success that Zurer has managed since being cast as Eric Bana’s husband in Steven Spielberg’s Munich four years ago. The Los Angeles Time recently published a flattering profile of Zurer, calling her the Julia Roberts of Israel.

According to director Ron Howard, Zurer beat out eight other actresses who also had screen-tested with Hanks for the role of truth-seeking Italian physicist Vittoria Vetra.

“There’s something very unself-conscious and honest and earthy about Ayelet,” says Howard, “and yet she has the capacity to deal with the scientific jargon in a way that felt honest and she felt comfortable with it.”

The story goes on to describe her upbringing in Israel as the child of a Holocaust survivor.

Despite her lightheartedness, Zurer seems to possess a kind of subtle stoic quality, which might be genetic or simply the product of growing up in the Middle East. She is a child of the Holocaust — her mother, then just a 5-year- old in Czechoslovakia, lived through the war by hiding out in a convent, and later reunited with her family for only a year in the forest. In the ’50s, she immigrated to Israel, and ultimately married Zurer’s father, a government worker who painted on the side.

There were oil paints in Zurer’s Tel Aviv home, and “everybody expected me to do something with painting,” but then genes overtook her, she explains. “What happened was I became this pretty girl from a non-pretty girl and was dragged into doing all kinds of things on stage. I found it to be really fun, but never thought I’d pursue it, because I was too shy.”

She did her required army stint – singing for the troops as part of a special arts division. She admits that whenever she’s asked about her army experience, “I always get this redness in my skin and face. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t carry a gun, thank you very much.”

After her army service, Zurer went on to study acting in New York before ultimately returning to Israel, where she won the 2003 Israeli Oscar equivalent for her performance as a woman who lost her husband in a terrorist attack in the dramedy Nina’s Tragedies and later starred in the TV series “B’Tipul,” the forerunner of HBO’s “In Treatment.”

Then Hollywood beckoned, and a star was born. Let’s see if Liraz Charhi can repeat the feat.

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