Nehemiah Persoff - Movies, Bio & Filmography

Meet Nehemiah Persoff

★ Acting🎥 71 films📺 125 TV shows📅 1948–2022🔥 2

Born in Jerusalem, Palestine Mandate

1919-08-02 (age 102 at death)

Died 2022-04-05

Nehemiah Persoff (August 2, 1919 – April 5, 2022) was an American film and television actor. He was born in Jerusalem, Palestine Mandate.

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 (portraying Barbra Streisand's character's father), Twins and the American Tail (animated-film series) (voiced, "Papa Mousekewitz").

Persoff appeared in such television series as, Five Fingers ("The Moment of Truth"), The Big Valley ("Legend of a General", Parts I & II, episode), The Twilight Zone ("Judgment Night" episode), Alfred Hitchcock Presents ("Heart of Gold" episode), The Untouchables, Naked City, The Legend of Jesse James, Gunsmoke, The Wild Wild West, Hawaii Five-O, Ellery Queen ("The Adventure of the Pharaoh's Curse" episode), Mission: Impossible (3 episodes), Adam-12 ("Vendetta" episode), Charlie's Angels, Hunter, Columbo, 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.

Description above from the Wikipedia article Nehemiah Persoff, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.From Wikipedia
Nehemiah Persoff (Hebrew: נחמיה פרסוף; August 2, 1919 – April 5, 2022) was an American actor and painter. He appeared in more than 200 television series, films, and theatre productions, and also performed as a voice artist in a career spanning 55 years.
His first acting role was as an extra in The Naked City (1948). Persoff is best known for roles as Leo in The Harder They Fall (1956), as Little Bonaparte in Some Like It Hot (1959), as Jake "Greasy Thumb" Guzik in The Untouchables (1959–1963), as Rebbe Mendel in Yentl (1983), and as the voice of Papa Mousekewitz in the animated film An American Tail (1986) and its sequels. He also made appearances on episodes of The Twilight Zone, Gilligan's Island, Hawaii Five-O, Adam-12, and Law & Order.
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