There’s an Israeli star in Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Perez,” the musical about a drug cartel boss who undergoes gender-affirming surgery, which just became the non-English language film to be nominated for the most Academy Awards in history. That star’s name is Mark Ivanir, and his character, Dr. Wasserman, is the one who actually performs that pivotal operation. Ivanir even sings a moving song with Zoe Saldana that I can’t seem to get out of my head.
The song, “Lady,” is the musical film’s only English tune, and it is sung in Wasserman’s office in Tel Aviv (the Israeli city’s name flashes in a big font over the screen) where Rita, Saldana’s character, asks him to come perform the surgery on her mysterious client in Mexico. The two discuss the ethics and world-changing potential of such a procedure, with Wasserman telling her, through song, that while he has been a doctor since he was 24 (an unlikely feat in Israel!), “My door is not God’s door.” Instead, he suggests that her client, Manitas, played by Karla Sofía Gascón, “better change ID.” Rita argues that “changing the body changes society, changing society changes the soul.”
The nice Jewish doctor eventually acquiesces, and we see him travel to Mexico to meet Manitas and discuss the procedure. Manitas urges him to help her — it is her only hope to lead her own life, she tells him, and he asks her if she’s always wanted to be a woman since childhood. When she replies in the affirmative, he agrees.
When I discovered that Ivanir was in this strange and unusual movie, my first thought was, well, of course! No, Ivanir is not known for his musical roles, but there’s literally nothing he can’t do. The Israeli actor is a Jack of all trades (who was actually in a Jack in the Box commercial). He speaks English, Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian, some German and Arabic and has acted in all these languages — sometimes using three or four in one role, like he did when he played Jewish gangster in the masterful period drama “Babylon Berlin.” Both of his parents were language teachers, which may explain his adeptness with different tongues.
If you’re a fan of TV, video games or movies, you’ve heard his voice and may recognize his angular face and soft eyes. “Emilia Perez” isn’t even the first groundbreaking work about a trans person that turned into a musical that he’s been in. He played the Israeli guard Nitzan in season three of “Transparent,” where he gets into some heated arguments about Israel with the Pfefferman family as they visit the country. Ivanir shared that he improvised and made the role meatier and a more authentic representation of the type of Israeli he was made to portray.
His first major movie role was of corrupt Jewish official Marcel Goldberg in “Schindler’s List” — which he got when the actor originally cast for it fell ill in the last moment. Shooting that film hit home for Ivanir, who was born in Ukraine long after World War II but whose father lost a hand in it, and whose grandfather, famed Yiddish writer Meshulem Surkis, lost many of his relatives in the camps. One day while shooting, Ivanir recalled in a recent interview, he imagined seeing his sister and mother in the throng of extras playing Jews being deported and had to return to his hotel, shaken. In that same interview, Ivanir recalled that much of the cast didn’t believe the movie was going to be the success it eventually became — a hit movie that earned him an agent and the visa that helped him settle with his family in the U.S. He shared that he recently rewatched it with his two grown daughters, Sasha and Daniella, and admired how timeless the movie feels. He’s worked with Spielberg again since, on the movie “The Terminal” and his adaptation of the hit Belgian comic “Tintin.”
Ivanir has played such a wide range of roles: militants, queer men, doctors, Haredi gangsters and tailors. He plays comedic roles just as well as dramatic ones. He can play someone tough and inflexible, a macho man, but he is especially compelling when he takes on someone with a soft underbelly, like his role in “Emilia Perez,” which he was drawn to because of Wasserman’s humanity, sincerity and softness amidst a tale about toxic masculinity and female empowerment, he recalled in an interview with The Culture Pop Podcast.
Ivanir’s family came to Israel in the ’70s when he was 7. Before he became known for playing Mossad agents, he actually considered a career in the intelligence agency (and then decided to go to clown school before studying in Israel’s vaunted Nissan Nativ acting studio). He is a founding member of Israel’s Russian Gesher Theater, one of the country’s most iconic and revered theater troupes. His Russian wasn’t up to snuff compared to some of the others in the cast, but his acting skills eclipsed whatever language deficiencies he had. He also helped some of the theater members improve their acting in Hebrew, continuing a family legacy of teaching languages.
Ivanir has been steadily working in Hollywood and in TV across the globe for decades. He’s had guest roles in many a popular American TV show, including “Walker, Texas Ranger” “JAG,” “CSI,” “The Mentalist,” “Dollhouse” and “The Blacklist.” He’s had recurring roles in shows like “Homeland,” where he played a Russian intelligence agent. In the HBO hit “Barry,” he plays not one but two Chechen mafia members, twin brothers Vacha and Ruslan. He was in the excellent “The New Pope,” where he played the Ambassador of the United States to the Holy See across Jude Law (it’s really hard to find a Hollywood bigwig he hasn’t been in a movie or TV show with).
He played a Russian cosmonaut who goes to space with Hilary Swank in “Away.” In the British show “Litvinenko” about the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, he plays Russia-American activist Alexander Goldfarb. Most recently, he’s in “The Zweiflers,” a German show that’s been dubbed a “Jewish Sopranos,” and is about to appear in the upcoming Netflix limited series “Zero Day” which stars Robert De Niro.
When it comes to Israeli TV, he was a Russian agent in Ron Leshem’s first TV project, “The Gordin Cell,” and played the sassy agent of actress Rotem Sela’s character in “Beauty and the Baker.”
But wait, there’s more. He played the titular character in the critically acclaimed Israeli film “The Human Resources Manager.” He played an Israeli general in “7 Days in Entebbe” and was in the Gideo Raff Netflix movie “The Red Sea Diving Resort.” He played a Holocaust survivor in the film “Bye, Bye, Germany.” He was in one of Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s last movies, “A Late Quartet.” He played Jesse Eisenberg’s father Sam in the indie drama about a Haredi drug trafficker, “Holy Rollers.”
His voice is in games like the Call of Duty franchise and Diablo II. In the dystopic Wolfenstein games, which imagine a world where the Nazis won World War II, he plays a Jewish member of a mystical society, Da’at Yichud. In Asia, apparently, he’s known for his roles in martial arts films like “Undisputed 2” and “Undisputed 3.” See? Ivanir is a true renaissance man. And he does it all so well.
It doesn’t matter if he has one minute or one hour on screen — I’ll always be willing to watch him in any project, playing characters who always win you over and appearing in projects that are delightfully out of the box. It’s truly thrilling to see this long-familiar Israeli face become part of Oscar history in his own small way.
