Chaim Topol

Acting

Chaim Topol

Born 1935-09-09 · Tel Aviv, Israel

Chaim Topol (September 9, 1935 - March 8, 2023), often billed simply as Topol, was an Israeli theatrical and film performer, singer and illustrator. He is best known for his portrayal of Tevye, the lead role in the stage musical Fiddler on the Roof and the 1971 film adaptation, performing this role more than 3,500 times from 1967 through 2009. Description above from the Wikipedia article Chaim Topol, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Acting credits

For Your Eyes Only poster
6.5

A British spy ship has sunk and on board was a hi-tech encryption device. James Bond is sent to find the device that holds British launching instructions before the enemy Soviets get to it first.

For Your Eyes Only

1981

Flash Gordon poster
6.3

A football player and his mates travel to the planet Mongo and find themselves fighting the tyranny of Ming the Merciless to save Earth.

Flash Gordon

1980

Fiddler on the Roof poster
7.7

In a pre-revolutionary Russia, a poor Jewish milkman struggles with the challenges of a changing world as his daughters fall in love and antisemitism grows.

Fiddler on the Roof

1971

Cast a Giant Shadow poster
6.3

An American Army officer is recruited by the yet to exist Israel to help them form an army. He is disturbed by this sudden appeal to his Jewish heritage. Each of Israel's Arab neighbors has vowed to invade the poorly prepared country as soon as partition is granted. He is made commander of the Israeli forces just before the war begins.

Cast a Giant Shadow

1966

Follow Me! poster
7.8

A strait-laced British banker hires an eccentric private detective to follow his free-spirited American wife, whom he suspects is cheating on him.

Follow Me!

1972

A Talent for Loving poster
5.2

This Western spoof stars Richard Widmark as an American gambler who wins the deed to a Mexican ranch from a cunning outlaw. At the ranch, the gambler discovers that his new lands have entangled him in an ancient Aztec curse. The ranch's patriarch tries to persuade the newcomer to marry his daughter and explains that the family's women are doomed to be especially fierce and prolific in their romantic encounters.

A Talent for Loving

1969

Life After Flash poster
5.6

A look at the roller coaster life of Sam J. Jones since his role as Flash Gordon, his struggles and successes, and the aftermath of when he went up against one of the most powerful producers in Hollywood.

Life After Flash

2017

El Dorado poster
5.7

Sherman, who is on trial for murder, is found not guilty thanks to reasonable doubt, however; having stood trial leaves the young felon a changed man. He falls head over heels with his defence attorney’s bright daughter and is even willing to turn his back on a life of crime for her, including walking away from his long-time partner, Jaffan prostitute, Margot. However, the road back to the straight and narrow is not an easy one and indeed, many around hm are wary of this so-called, newly-reformed Sherman.

El Dorado

1963

Left Luggage poster
6.3

While escaping from Nazis during the WWII, a Jewish man dug suitcases full of things dear to his heart in the ground two. The war deprived him of his family, and afterwards he endlessly turns over the soil of Antwerp to find the suitcases, which makes him look obsessed. He keeps checking old maps and keeps digging, trying to find, in fact, those he lost. His daughter Chaya is a beautiful modern girl looking for a part-time job. She finds a place as a nanny in the strictly observant Chassidic family with many children, although her secular manners clearly fly in the face of many commandments. One of the reasons she is accepted is that mother of the family is absolutely overburdened by the household, so she stays despite the resistance of the father, normally - an indisputable authority in the family. She develops a special bond with the youngest of the boys, four-year old Simcha, so far incapable of speaking.

Left Luggage

1998

I Like Mike poster
6.4

This romantic drama directed by Peter Frye is about the son of a millionaire Jewish family living in Texas who travels to Israel. On his way to the hotel in Tel Aviv after landing at the airport, the son Mike (Seymour Gitin) gets invited to spend some time with a cab driver's family. Before he has time to experience jet lag, the unwanted attentions of a female in the hotel send Mike packing. He ends up with the cabbie's family, a mixed group presided over by an authoritative matriarch (Batya Lancet). She sees no reason why one of her marriageable daughters should not hook up with this millionaire Mike, but Mike has already lost his heart to a model on a magazine cover -- quite a sticky wicket.

I Like Mike

1961

Galileo poster
6.1

Challenged by a new student, tutor and theorist Galileo co-opts emerging telescope technology and discovers irrefutable proof of the heretical notion that the earth is not the center of the universe. But in a rigid society ruled by an uneasy alliance of aristocracy and clergy already undermined by the Plague and the Reformation, science is a threat and enlightenment is a luxury. Faced with either death at the hands of the Inquisition or recantation to a hypocritical but all-powerful Papacy, Galileo must choose between his own life and the restless scientific curiosity that he has spurned family, friends, and wealth to pursue.

Galileo

1975

Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles poster
6.5

The origin story behind one of Broadway's most beloved musicals, Fiddler on The Roof, and its creative roots in early 1960s New York, when "tradition" was on the wane as gender roles, sexuality, race relations and religion were evolving.

Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles

2019

Fiddler's Journey to the Big Screen poster
6.0

The fall of 2021 marked the 50th anniversary of Fiddler on the Roof, the film Pauline Kael (The New Yorker) called "the most powerful movie musical ever made." Narrated by Jeff Goldblum, FIDDLER'S JOURNEY TO THE BIG SCREEN captures the humor and drama of director Norman Jewison's quest to recreate the lost world of Jewish life in Tsarist Russia and re-envision the beloved stage hit as a wide-screen epic. Oscar-nominated filmmaker Daniel Raim puts us in the director's chair and in Jewison's heart and mind, drawing on behind-the-scenes footage and never-before-seen stills as well as original interviews with Jewison, Topol (Tevye), composer John Williams, production designer Robert F. Boyle, film critic Kenneth Turan, lyricist Sheldon Harnick, and actresses Rosalind Harris, Michele Marsh, and Neva Small (Tevye’s daughters). The film explores how the experience of making Fiddler deepened Jewison as an artist and revived his soul.

Fiddler's Journey to the Big Screen

2022

Roman Behemshechim poster
7.0

A highly successful lawyer realises, after a cardiac warning, that he may have squandered his life when he left his first wife and all the ideals of youth she stood for, to marry a neurotic poet and join the rat race for money & success.

Roman Behemshechim

1985

Before Winter Comes poster
6.0

Drama/Comedy set in a refugee camp in occupied Austria after World War II. A shrewd multi-lingual interpreter who mediates between Russian and British military brass enters into a friendly rivalry with British Major Giles Burnside, who is in charge of assigning the displaced persons into either the American or Russian zones.

Before Winter Comes

1969

No artwork available
7.3

By the age of thirty he’d already become the most famous poet in the Jewish world. He spent very few years living in Tel Aviv, but he loved the city dearly. Some 100,000 people attended his funeral in 1934. “King of the Jews” is a portrait of the most beloved Jew of his day, Chaim Nachman Bialik. Combining special animation, a voice track by Chaim Topol, rare archival footage, long-forgotten photographs, poems by Bialik performed by Ninet and interviews with the foremost Bialik researchers and fans in Israel and around the world, this film retells the story of the little boy from the shtetl, who became King of the Jews.

Bialik - King of the Jews

2014

The House on Garibaldi Street poster
6.3

When Israeli officials learn that Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann may be living in Argentina, they send a team of secret agents to apprehend him.

The House on Garibaldi Street

1979

Harry Saltzman: Showman poster
6.6

The story of Harry Saltzman, producer of the first James Bond movies.

Harry Saltzman: Showman

2000

Inside 'For Your Eyes Only' poster
6.6

A behind the scenes look at the James Bond film "For Your Eyes Only"

Inside 'For Your Eyes Only'

2000

Sallah poster
6.8

Sallah Shabati, the patriarch of a big family recently arrived to Israel from Yemen, tries to make money and get better housing, in a country that can barely provide for its own and is in the midst of absorbing hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees from Arab countries.

Sallah

1964

Tel Katzir poster
7.0

A documentary produced by Histadrut about Kibbutz Tel Katzir. Although modest in size, Tel Katzir stands in the center of a border conflict between Israel and Syria. The kibbutz, located in the demilitarized zone between the countries, is a frequent target of Syrian attacks. Between one attack and the next, Tel Katzir members lead their work, family, and cultural life.

Tel Katzir

1964

Bond in Greece poster
6.0

A documentary about For Your Eyes Only filming in Greece.

Bond in Greece

2006

No artwork available
9.0

A ten-year-old Israeli boy whose father died years earlier during the Six-Day-War is determined to find out more about his father's death. He skips school and, with the help of a friendly cab driver, heads to Jerusalem to find the men who fought with his father's unit and learn the exact circumstances. During the drive from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the cabbie provides a history of the establishment of the Jewish state

The Going Up of David Lev

1973

The Rooster poster
7.0

Sergeant Gidi Tsur (Topol) serves in the reserve in the Suez Canal. He goes on vacation and is supposed to meet with his wife to get divorced in the Rabbinate. Meanwhile, he spends his time in the company of other women.

The Rooster

1971

Behind the camera