Theodore Bikel

Early years

Theodore Bikel was born into a Jewish family in Vienna, Austria, to Miriam and Josef Bikel, who came from Bukovina. After the German annexation of Austria in 1938, the family fled to Palestine, where his father's contacts helped them obtain British passports. Bikel studied at the Mikve Yisrael agricultural school and joined Kibbutz Kfar HaMaccabi. He began acting in his teens, performing with Habimah Theatre in 1943 and becoming a founding member of the Cameri Theatre.

He described the acting experience there as similar to, if not better than, the method acting techniques taught at the Actors Studio. In 1945, he moved to London to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. From the mid-1940s to the late 1950s, he appeared in many British B-movies and some A-films, often playing European criminals. He played the lead in the 1956 film Flight from Vienna.

Bikel did not return to live in Israel or participate in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and later wrote that a small voice in him questioned whether he could fully acquit himself for that decision.

Career

In 1948, Michael Redgrave recommended Bikel to Laurence Olivier as an understudy for Stanley Kowalski and Mitch in the West End premiere of A Streetcar Named Desire. Bikel's main role was the minor part of Pablo Gonzales, but he unexpectedly starred opposite Vivien Leigh when the actor playing Mitch fell ill. Leigh told him to go onstage without rehearsal, and after the show praised his performance. Bikel was known for his versatility in playing characters of many nationalities and ethnic backgrounds, which he said kept his acting from growing stale. On television, he portrayed an Armenian merchant on Ironside, a Polish professor on Charlie's Angels, a tyrannical law school professor on The Paper Chase, a Bulgarian villain on Falcon Crest, a Belarusian on Star Trek: The Next Generation, and an Italian on Murder, She Wrote.

Personal life

Bikel was married four times. He married Ofra Ichilov in 1952; they divorced the following year. His second marriage was to Rita Weinberg Call in 1967, with whom he had two children; they divorced in 2008. He married conductor Tamara Brooks later that year; she died in 2012.

He married journalist Aimee Ginsburg on December 29, 2013. Bikel was a longtime activist in civil-rights and human-rights movements, fundraising through performances. He co-founded the Actors Federal Credit Union in 1962 and was a delegate to the 1968 Democratic National Convention. He served as president of Actors' Equity from 1977 to 1982 and was president of the Associated Actors and Artistes of America from 1988.

He supported John Kennedy's campaign during the run of The Sound of Music, sometimes speaking at rallies between performances, and once accompanied Eleanor Roosevelt to a Democratic rally. In 1968, he supported Eugene McCarthy and attended the convention as a pro-McCarthy delegate. At the 1977 AFL–CIO Convention, he welcomed Russian dissident Vladimir Bukovsky. He was arrested in 1986 while protesting the plight of Soviet Jews in front of the Soviet Embassy in Washington.