05.02.2012                      12.Schwat. 5772

Altes Interview:

Haaretz special / Legendary actor Ben Gazzara expresses love for his Jewish 'brothers'

The Italian-American actor, who died on Friday in New York, speaks about emotional link to Jewish community in 20-year-old audio recording.

Ben Gazzara, the respected Italian-American actor of stage and screen who died Friday in New York at the age of 81, expressed a special affinity and kinship with the Jews, whom he called his "brothers," according to a rare, 20-year-old audio recording made available to Haaretz.
"My earliest friends were Jews, when it wasn't so chic to have Jewish friends," Gazzara recalled in a spontaneous interview with this reporter while attending a Manhattan fundraiser for the Jerusalem-based David Yellin Institute in 1991. "I found them exciting, in terms of their intelligence and their passion about acting or producing or directing," said Gazzara, who studied with Lee Strasberg at the famed Actors Studio in Manhattan….