Lior Ashkenazi is one of the most prominent actors in 21st century Israel; a performer whose face has become globally synonymous with Israeli film’s renaissance. Following a number of TV series stints in the late 1990s, Ashkenazi was cast as the male lead in Dover Kosashvili’s Late Marriage (2001), a role that earned him not only his big break but also his first Ophir Award. He later had two follow-up major roles: the first, in Eytan Fox’s Walk on Water (2004) and the second, in the hit TV series, In Therapy (Hagai Levi, Ori Sivan, Nir Bergman, 2005). Highlights of his long list of credits that followed include Salt of the Earth (Uri Barbash, 2006), Lost and Found (Savi Gabizon, 2007), Eli & Ben (Ori Ravid, 2009), and Rabies (Aharon Keshales, Navot Papushado, 2010).
In 2011, Ashkenazi won his second Ophir Award for his role in Footnote (2011), Joseph Cedar’s award-winning film that was also nominated for an Oscar in the Best Foreign Film category. Those years, Ashkenazi was a fixture in dozens of films and TV series including Adama (Rani Blair, 2011), Big Bad Wolves (Aharon Keshales, Navot Papushado, 2013), and Encirclements (Lee Gilat, 2014). In 2017, he co-starred alongside Richard Gere in Joseph Cedar’s Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer and later, that same year, took home his third Ophir Award; this time, for his role in Samuel Maoz’s Foxtrot, which won that year’s Golden Lion Prize at the Venice Film Festival. Through the years, Ashkenazi continued to appear in lots of television series and plays, lending his voice to many animated films, and hosting a slew of TV programmes and specials.
