An interview in The Independent with actor Jeff Goldblum takes a Jewish turn:
I nudge him on to the firmer ground of Adam Resurrected. “It was intense,” he says of his role as Adam Stein, a Jewish former circus performer forced by a concentration-camp guard to pretend to be a German shepherd dog. “Paul [Schrader, the director] likes to describe the film as a man who was once a dog who meets a dog who was once a boy. That’s a little cryptic though. I had a year to prepare for it, thank goodness, and I immersed myself in it, I did as much work as I could. I went to a concentration camp in Poland, the one that’s said to be the most intact – it was a very powerful experience. I went to Israel for the first time a couple of times and talked to some survivors in Los Angeles.”
This is the first time that Goldblum, who is Jewish, has done a part where his Jewishness is part of the character. Is that why he took the part? “Oh, it was a creative project. I’ve never done a movie about this subject, so there were Jewish things about it, you know. Yes. Mmmm.”
Is he observant about his religion? Does he celebrate Passover, for example? “Oooooh, you know,” he says, his giant hands wafting about in the air, eyes rolling in their sockets. “I celebrate it in my own way, nothing traditional or traditionally observant.” Does he believe in God? “Uhhm, not in the way I think people… ssss… uhh, do I believe in a figure outside myself, a being, who lives somewhere… where we can’t see them who, you know, umm, sends you to heaven or hell… I’m not sure I believe in that bit of it. I, I, I, err, ahh you know… I believe in stillness and spaciousness.”
It’s a mesmerising display of stammering and obfuscation. And all the while his head is rolling and his hands are drifting about and his rubbery face is performing acrobatics as he rolls his eyes back into his head, works his jaw and flutters his eyelashes. Then he jerks his chin up and his eyes twinkle. “Do you like Japanese food?”
