Elana Eden

Elana Eden was born in 1940 in Bat Yam

Elana Eden was born Elana Lani Cooper on 1 May 1940 in Bat Yam. Her father, Zvi Cooper, was a landscape gardener born in Poland, and her mother was born in the Russian Empire. She grew up speaking Hebrew and has an older brother and sister.

She attended high school at a kibbutz in the Sharon plain. At 15 she decided to become an actress after seeing Pygmalion. She won a scholarship to the Habima Theatre Drama School in Tel Aviv.

She served as a machine gunner in the Israeli Army ground forces. In 1958 she appeared in the plays Lysistrata and The Merchant of Venice.

In 1957 she auditioned in London for The Diary of Anne Frank, but Millie Perkins got the part. Producer Samuel G. Engel later cast her as Ruth in The Story of Ruth, and her name was changed from Cooper to Eden. She then worked in film and television in the United States and Israel, including Trunk to Cairo in 1966.

She married playwright Nissim Aloni in 1962, and they divorced in 1965. In 1969 she married American composer Fred Myrow, who died in 1999. They had 3 daughters.