Jason Isaacs

Just when you think you couldn't love the world of Harry Potter any more, you find out that Lucius Malfoy is played by a Jewish actor! Next up is the movie version of the book Deathly Hallows, which they are actually splitting into two movies!

Jason has been in some other magical movies, too, often playing the bad guy. He was Captain Hook in the recent live-action Peter Pan, Lord Felton in Dragonheart, and DeMarco in Elektra. Soon, he'll be in the video game-based The Last Airbender

His other specialty is war movies; he was in The Patriot, Black Hawk Down, Green Zone, and Windtalkers. His movie Good is about how German citizens responded to the Nazis. And in Skeletons, he plays a man known only as "The Colonel." But we're guessing he doesn't fry chickens!

Oh, and he was also the devlish Clark Devlin in Jackie Chan's The Tuxedo, too. On TV, he was Colin on West Wing, about politics, and Michael in Brotherhood, about politics and crime.

Jason's upcoming films include two very serious ones. The Man With the Football has nothing to do with sports; "the football" is the code word for the briefcase that holds the codes to launch nuclear missiles! That gives new meaning to a the football term "long bomb"! And Stopping Power is about a guy who steals an RV... then realizes there are people inside!

Jason was born in Liverpool, just like the Beatles. His Eastern-Euopean great-grandparents helped found the city's Jewish community, and young Jason went to Hebrew school there. But when his family moved to London, his friends and synagogue were attacked by anti-Semitic bullies. So Jason's parents moved to Israel.

As he told the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles: "I suddenly felt that my background was irrelevant." He says it's still hard to talk about being Jewish because of what he went through as a kid... but that it is much easier for him in America.

So on behalf of all America, we'd like to say: "Thanks! We're happy to have you, Jason! Stay as long as you like."

Bonus:

Jason went to acting school at the same place as Sir Laurence Olivier (say: o-lih-vee-AY). Trust us, this is impressive-- ask your folks.

Laurence is considered by many to be the greatest Shakespearean actor of the 20th Century, and one of the best actors ever, period; he was even made a knight by the Queen of England!

He was not Jewish, but he acted in some very Jewish movies. He was a Nazi chasing Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man... a Nazi hunter in Boys from Brazil, based on Jewish author Ira Levin's book about Hilter clones... Shylock, the Jewish Merchant of Venice in a TV version of that Shaklespeare play... and Neil Diamond's dad in the remake of The Jazz Singer, about a Jewish guy who would rather be a rock star than a cantor.

Why are we writing about Laurence if he's not Jewish? Just to point out that Jewish stories can be so universal that they speak to everyone. Of course, if you think about how much impact the Torah stories have had on the world, you already knew that!