Arts & Entertainment

Illuminating Ayelet Zurer

Angels & Demons actress draws from her mother's
Holocaust experience for Ron Howard thriller.

Naomi Pfefferman

Jewish Journal of Greater L.A.

.0.
St
ZE
Los Angeles
u ;74
3 NE j
W hile on location in Rome for n'
Angels & Demons, Ayelet Zurer li
sat in a cafe not far from the ;-
Vatican, querying her mother, who as a
child had to hide from the Nazis in a con- i
vent.
The Israeli-born actress was shooting
the Ron Howard thriller, to be released
May 15, in which, in one of life's odd
turns, she now plays a woman orphaned
and raised in a convent. A kindly priest
eventually takes in the child, Vittoria Vetra,
and she follows in his career footsteps to
become, like him, a physicist.
Early on in the film, Vetra is shocked
to learn that he has been murdered and
his life's work, a canister of volatile "anti-
matter," has been stolen. She soon teams
up with Harvard symbologist Robert
Tom Hanks and Ayelet Zurer star in Angels & Demons.
Langdon (Tom Hanks) to solve the mys-
tery of the death, racing through crypts
a sexy but troubled character in the wildly
nated world of the Vatican.
and catacombs to unravel a conspiracy
popular Israeli TV series Be'Tipul, now
"It was fitting that my mother and I
pointing to a secret society of "free-think-
adapted for HBO as In Treatment.
had this conversation in Rome, the most
ers," the Illuminati, who are bent on
In 2005, Zurer made her Hollywood
Catholic of cities," Zurer added. Church
revenge against the Church.
debut as the lively wife of a tortured
officials reportedly did not allow the pro-
The movie is based on the Dan Brown
duction to shoot in Vatican City, a reaction Mossad agent in Steven Spielberg's
bestseller of the same name and serves as
Munich. She has since portrayed an allur-
to what they perceived as church-bashing
a film sequel to 2006's The Da Vinci Code,
ing assassin in the high-grossing Vantage
themes in The Da Vinci Code. During one
also based on a Brown novel, directed by
Point and a sadomasochistic nurse in love
night shoot inside the St. Angelo mauso-
Howard and starring Hanks.
with Jeff Goldblum in Paul Schrader's
leum,"someone literally turned the lights
Zurer tends to meticulously research
Adam Resurrected, which is still on the
out on us," the actress told Entertainment
her characters, and she read several books
festival circuit.
Weekly.
on particle physics in preparation to play
When Ron Howard cast her in the
Howard has actively defended the film,
Vittoria. But one of her best resources for
coveted Angels & Demons, it was report-
writing on the Huffington Post Web site
the film proved to be her mother, who
that "Catholics, including most in the hier- edly over high-profile actresses including
was separated from her parents at age
Naomi Watts.
archy of the Church, will enjoy the movie
5 and raised Catholic for three years in
Although The Da Vinci Code received
for what it is: an exciting mystery, set in
Czechoslovakia.
relatively poor reviews, it grossed more
the awe-inspiring beauty of Rome." Zurer
"I wanted to hear her memories of the
than $750 million worldwide. The sequel
also views the story as "a fiction" rather
priests and the nuns:' said Zurer, who is
is practically guaranteed to kick Zurer's
than an anti-Catholic crusade.
in her late 30s and lives with her husband
American career up several notches. Asked
After the war, Zurer's mother was
and their 4-year-old son in Venice. "I also
about becoming the first Israeli actress to
reunited with her parents, former lum-
wanted to learn about the separation from
achieve such visibility, she reacts more like
ber manufacturers who survived the
family because when you lose parents at
the Israeli girl next door than someone
Holocaust in hiding. The family relocated
such a young age, something very intense
who can pick up a phone to call Spielberg
to Tel Aviv, where Zurer was born, raised
happens to you, which I thought might
or Howard for advice, blushing and pre-
and pursued acting in high school.
happen to my character as well. Perhaps
She is now perhaps the most prominent tending to hide her face beneath her shirt
it could have something to do with how
collar.
Israeli actress of her generation, winning
Vittoria deals with life — her relentless-
"It's funny because I've never had a
the 2003 Israeli Oscar for her performance
ness, her independence of thought, her
publicist before," she said over lunch. If
in Nina's Tragedies and playing the role of
fight for her way, even in the male-domi-

she has managed to avoid Hollywood's
stereotyping of Middle Eastern actors as
terrorists, it is not because she tried to
avoid such parts. "I did play a terrorist
in Vantage Point, but she was Spanish,
not Israeli," Zurer said. "And I did make a
conscious decision to try for very diverse
roles, which I think has helped."
Zurer's delicate hands gracefully work
the air as she describes working with Jeff
Goldblum, "an eccentric, hard-working,
flirtatious creature"; she recalls Schrader
as a "poetic soul" who loaned her his iPod
so she could get to know him in a nonver-
bal way; Hanks as a "wonderful partner
who gives an actor space," and who is a
"great listener" on set and off. When Zurer
once told him a story while preparing to
shoot a scene, he listened so intently that
he put his shoes on the wrong feet.
It is remarkable that Zurer pursued
acting in the first place, given the intense
stage fright she experienced as a teen-
ager. "Even when I was doing The Vagina
Monologues at Habima [theater] for three
years, I would still get really nervous
before stepping onstage," she said. "I could
have totally thrown up, that's how bad it
could get, with my heart beating, hands
sweating, like the prey before the predator!'
In college, Zurer assumed she would
become an illustrator until she spent a
month modeling in Japan. During that
time, she hung out with a British model
who had experienced drug addiction and
boyfriend troubles; when she returned to
Israel, she was cast as an abused model
in a school production of Rainer Werner
Fassbinder's The Bitter Tears of Petra von
Kant. "Only then did it occur to me how
deeply you can go in portraying a charac-
ter, and how your real-life experiences can
be reflected in the theater," she said.
Zurer studied acting in New York for
three years before returning to Israel,
where she married in 2003 and gave birth
to her son, Liad. "I thought I was just
going to be a mother and that my career
was pretty much over, but I was content,"
she said. She only reluctantly accepted the
Be'Tipul role and was even more reluctant
when the call came to audition for a film-
maker the casting director described only
as "a famous director from America."

Illuminating on page B7

May 14 2009

B5