Chaim Topol
1935–2023 · Israeli actor and singer, known for playing Tevye
Chaim Topol (Tel Aviv, 1935 - Tel Aviv, 2023), known mononymously as Topol, was an Israeli actor and singer. He is best remembered for playing Tevye, the dairyman at the centre of the musical Fiddler on the Roof, a role he performed for decades on stage and in the 1971 film adaptation. That performance won him a Golden Globe and an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. His importance lies in being, from the 1960s through the 1980s, the Israeli entertainer with the broadest international recognition.
His career began during his military service, with the Nahal entertainment troupe, where he sang and acted on tours around the country. After his discharge he worked with kibbutz theatre groups, and in 1960 he co-founded the Haifa Municipal Theatre. Between 1960 and 1964 he was part of the satirical company Batzal Yarok, whose name means "green onion", which also toured Israel.
His breakthrough on screen came with Sallah Shabati (1964), directed by Ephraim Kishon, a social satire about a Sephardic immigrant family in the transit camps of the 1950s. Topol, who had already performed sketches from the play with Nahal, contributed ideas to the character and asked that he be played as a general Mizrahi Jew rather than as a man from one specific community. The role earned him a Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer.
In 1967 he joined the London production of Fiddler on the Roof at Her Majesty's Theatre, having first played the part in Israel in 1966. He was not yet fluent in English, so he learned the score by listening to the Broadway cast recording and worked on his pronunciation with a British coach. Jerome Robbins, who came to direct the London staging, helped him move away from caricature. The London run ended up with 430 performances.
His film work includes Galileo (1975), in which he played Galileo Galilei, Flash Gordon (1980), as Dr Hans Zarkov, and For Your Eyes Only (1981), as Milos Columbo. He was nominated for a Tony Award for a 1991 Broadway revival of Fiddler on the Roof. In 2015 he received the Israel Prize for lifetime achievement. He was a founder of Variety Israel and of Jordan River Village, a camp for Arab and Jewish children with life-threatening illnesses.
His legacy rests largely on Tevye, a role he kept for more than four decades. In 2022 his family revealed that he was suffering from Alzheimer's disease. He died in Tel Aviv in March 2023, at the age of 87.