Sasson Gabai is a theatre, film, and television actor – winner of the European Film Awards and the Israeli Ophir Awards in the Best Actor category for his role in Eran Kolirin’s critically-acclaimed film, The Band’s Visit (2007). Gabai has won a total of three Ophir Awards to date with the other two being for supporting roles he’s had – the first, in Haim Bouzaglo’s Time for Cherries (1991) and the second, in Gett – The Trial of Viviane Amsalem (Ronit Elkabetz and Shlomi Elkabetz, 2014).
Gabai has appeared on virtually every Israeli repertoire theatre stage and in recent years, he has been a fulltime member of Tel Aviv’s Beit Lessin Theatre company. Highlights of his stage credits include: The Servant of Two Masters, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Eating, Rain Man, Filumena Marturano, Rochaleh’s Wedding, Peter Pan, and Oliver. In 2018, Gabai joined the cast of the Broadway musical adaptation of The Band’s Visit.
Highlights of Gabai’s TV credits include: Kastner Trial, Sitton, War Room, Special Ops, Polishuk, Shtisel, Sirens, and Stockholm. His film credits include Light Out of Nowhere (Nissim Dayan, 1973), Rambo III (Peter MacDonald, 1988), The Quarry (Ron Ninio, 1990), Scar (Haim Bouzaglo, 1995), Made in Israel (Ari Folman, 2001), Aviva, my Love (Shemi Zarhin, 2006), Restoration (Yossi Madmoni, 2011), Hunting Elephants (Reshef Levi, 2013), The Kind Words (Shemi Zarhin, 2015), The Other Story (Avi Nesher, 2019), The Angel (Ariel Vromen, 2018).