Nehemiah Persoff (born August 2 1919, Jerusalem, Palestine Mandate (now Israel)) is a prolific American film and television character actor.
Born in what is now part of Israel, Persoff emigrated with his family to the United States in 1929. He began to take an interest in acting in the 1940s, and after serving in the Army during World War II, he began to pursue his acting career in the New York theater. In 1947, he was accepted into the Actor's Studio, and eventually began appearing in films.
His film credits include On the Waterfront, Some Like It Hot, Al Capone, The Greatest Story Ever Told, Voyage of the Damned, The Comancheros, Yentl (where he portrayed Barbra Streisand's father), Twins, and the American Tail animated-film series, where he provided the voice of Papa Mousekewitz.
Persoff appeared in such television series as The Big Valley: Legend of a General, Parts I & II, The Twilight Zone (in the episode "Judgment Night"), Alfred Hitchcock Presents (in the episode "Heart of Gold"), The Untouchables, The Wild Wild West, Hawaii Five-O, Mission: Impossible, Charlie's Angels, Hunter, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Magnum, P.I., Law & Order, and Chicago Hope.
In the mid-1980s, Persoff began to pursue painting, specializing in watercolour. This was at a time when health problems forced him to decrease his acting workload. Now retired from acting, he devotes full-time to his painting.
Born in 1919 (some sources say 1920) in Jerusalem, Nehemiah Persoff emigrated with his family to America in 1929. Following schooling at the Hebrew Technical Institute of New York, he found a job as a subway electrician doing signal maintenance until an interest in the theater altered the direction of his life. He joined amateur groups and subsequently won a scholarship to the Dramatic Workshop in New York. This led to what would have been his Broadway debut in a production of "Eve of St. Mark", but he was fired before the show opened. He made his official New York debut in a production of "The Emperor's New Clothes" in 1940. WWII interrupted his young career in 1942, returning to the stage after his hitch in the army was over three years later. He sought work in stock plays and became an intern of Stella Adler and, as a result, a strong exponent of the Actor's Studio. Discovered by Charles Laughton and cast in his production of "Galileo" in 1947, Persoff made his film debut a year later with an unbilled bit in Naked City, The (1948). Short, dark, chunky-framed and with a distinct talent for dialects, Persoff became known primarily for his ethnic villainy, usually playing authoritative Eastern Europeans. In a formidable career that had him portraying everything from cab drivers to Joseph Stalin, standout film roles would include Leo in Harder They Fall, The (1956) with Humphrey Bogart, Gene Conforti in Alfred Hitchcock (I)'s Wrong Man, The (1956), Albert in This Angry Age (1958) and gangster Johnny Torrio in Al Capone (1959). That same year he played another gangster, the small role of Little Bonaparte, in the classic comedy Some Like It Hot (1959). He was a durable performer during TV's "Golden Age" ("Gunsmoke" (1955), "Twilight Zone, The" (1959)) and well beyond ("Chicago Hope" (1994), "Law & Order" (1990)), playing hundreds of intense, volatile and dominating characters. In later years, his character's heart grew a bit softer as Barbra Streisand's Jewish father in Yentl (1983) and the voice of Papa Mousekewitz in the American Tail, An (1986) will attest. Later stage work included well-received productions of "I'm Not Rappaport" and his biographical one-man show "Sholem Aleichem". Persoff took to painting in 1985, studying sketching in Los Angeles, when declining health and high blood pressure forced him to slow down. Specializing in watercolor, he has created around 100 works of art, many of which have been exhibited up and down the coast of California.
