Fred Melamed
Fred Melamed
Fred Melamedis an American actor and writer. He is best known for portraying Sy Ableman in A Serious Man, Bruce Ben-Bacharach in Lady Dynamite, Sam Soto in In a World..., and for appearing in seven films directed by Woody Allen...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth13 May 1956
CountryUnited States of America
keys long together
There are some directors who don't like the set much. They like post-production, where you have all the ingredients in the can - you've got all the footage, all the music, the various effects - and then you have to do the alchemy necessary to make it all good, a long and very key process of putting everything together and making it into the cogent thing that you want.
baby new-york fire
I was always around people who were in the business from the time I was an absolute baby. I grew up in New York City, and my parents, my sister, and I had a house on Fire Island, and they were part of a set of people that were all close and friendly, most of whom were involved in show business in one regard or another. So it was always familiar to me, and I kind of enjoyed it.
fun school play
I always did plays in school because I thought it was fun, but it just never occurred to me as a thing to do.
character people way
In general, I'm always interested in characters who have kind of extreme aspects to them, who are in some ways larger than typical people.
world sometimes universal
I've always thought that, in a sense, the more specific and sometimes even the smaller the world of a movie is, the more universal it is.
careers long acting
In my career, I've had kind of a strange trajectory as an actor. I started out doing movies and theater and stuff, but then I had a terrible problem with stage fright as an actor on stage, and I quit stage acting for a long, long time.
mets
I'd always admired Diane Keaton, but I'd never met her.
running eight long
Though I acted in hundreds of productions, appeared at the Guthrie Theatre and on Broadway in Amadeus, I discovered in my thirties that I didn't really like stage acting. The presence of the audience, the eight shows a week and the possibility of a long run were all unnatural to me.
strong jewish-tradition keeping-your-mouth-shut
I don't really know of the Jewish tradition of comedy, only the Jewish tradition of not keeping your mouth shut. Complaining about all that is hard, unfair or ridiculous in life-having strong feelings, and not being able to suppress them. That, to me, is Jewish.
ignorant adherence legalism
I am tolerably ignorant about Judaism, and much of what I do know about it seems hard to swallow, because it is so grounded in legalism, and adherence to rituals.
stars three film
It's funny, but three of my early films were with Liam Neeson, before Liam Neeson was a big star.
long stage plans
I haven't appeared on stage in quite a long time and I don't have any immediate plans to do so, but I'm always interested in going back.
knowing wish world
We must agree to live in this world, with all that is unfair about it, without knowing why, if we wish to have a God in our lives.
boys years giving
Well, because I have twin seven-year-old boys, I enjoy the gift giving stuff a great deal. We do both Hanukkah and Christmas, so it is a costly, though extremely pleasing proposition.