Theodore Bikel

Theodore Bikel was born in 1924 in Vienna

Bikel was born in Vienna in 1924 to a Jewish family from Bukovina. His Zionist father named him after Theodor Herzl. After Austria was annexed in 1938, the family fled to Palestine, where he studied at the Mikve Yisrael agricultural school and joined Kibbutz Kfar HaMaccabi.

He began acting as a teenager, performed with Habimah in 1943 and was among the founders of the Cameri Theatre. In 1945 he moved to London to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. In 1948 he joined the London premiere of A Streetcar Named Desire.

He moved to the United States in 1954 and became a citizen in 1961. He appeared in films such as The African Queen, My Fair Lady and The Defiant Ones, which brought him an Academy Award nomination. On Broadway he created Captain von Trapp in The Sound of Music in 1959 and later played Tevye more than 2,000 times.

Bikel recorded Jewish folk albums and co-founded the Newport Folk Festival in 1959. He led Actors' Equity from 1973 to 1982 and headed the Associated Actors and Artistes of America. In 2007 he became board chairman of Meretz USA. He died in 2015.