Chaim Topol (; 9 September 1935 – 8 March 2023), mononymously known as Topol, was an Israeli actor and singer who portrayed Tevye, the lead character in the stage musical Fiddler on the Roof. Topol estimated that he played Tevye more than 3,500 times on stage from 1967 through 2009, and he also portrayed the character in the 1971 film adaptation of the play.
Topol began acting during his Israeli army service as a member of the Nahal entertainment troupe. He later toured Israel with kibbutz theatre and satirical theatre companies. He was a co-founder of the Haifa Theatre. His breakthrough film role came in 1964 as the title character in Sallah Shabati, by Israeli writer Ephraim Kishon, for which he won a Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer—Male. Topol went on to appear in more than 30 films in Israel and the United States, including Galileo (1975), Flash Gordon (1980), and the James Bond film For Your Eyes Only (1981). He was described as Israel's only internationally recognized entertainer from the 1960s through the 1980s. He won a Golden Globe for Best Actor and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for his 1971 film portrayal of Tevye, and was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actor for a 1991 Broadway revival of Fiddler on the Roof.
Topol was a founder of Variety Israel, an organization serving children with disabilities, and Jordan River Village, a year-round camp for Arab and Jewish children with life-threatening illnesses, for which he served as chairman of the board. In 2015 he was awarded the Israel Prize for lifetime achievement.
In October 2026 the documentary Topol: On Top of the World, directed by Alon Gur Arye and produced by Ofer Naim, premiered at the 42nd Haifa International Film Festival. Through the combination of interviews with him, his wife Galia, family members, colleagues and friends, and archival footage, the film portrays crucial decisions which led to successes and to passed up roles, which influenced his career. The film presents his charisma as well as his complexity.
Biography
Chaim Topol was born on September 9, 1935, in Tel Aviv, in what was then Mandatory Palestine. His father Jacob Topol was born in Russia and in the early 1930s immigrated to Palestine, where he worked as a plasterer; he also served in the Haganah paramilitary organization. His mother Imrela "Rel" (née Goldman) Topol was a seamstress.
Topol's parents had been members of the Betar Zionist youth movement in Warsaw. His father had Hasidic roots, with a mother coming from a family of Gerrer Hasidim and a father from Aleksander Hasidim.
Topol and his two younger sisters grew up in the South Tel Aviv working-class neighborhood of Florentin. As a young child, although he wanted to become a commercial artist, his elementary school teacher, the writer Yemima Avidar-Tchernovitz, saw a theatrical side to him, and encouraged him to act in school plays and read stories to the class.
At age 14, he began working as a printer at Davar newspaper while pursuing his high-school studies at night. He graduated at age 17 and moved to Kibbutz Geva. A year later, he enlisted in the Israeli army and became a member of the Nahal entertainment troupe, singing and acting in traveling shows. He rose in rank to troupe commander.
Twenty-three days after being discharged from military service on October 2, 1956, and two days after marrying Galia Finkelstein, a fellow Nahal troupe member, Topol was called up for reserve duty in the Sinai Campaign. He performed for soldiers stationed in the desert.
After the war, he and his wife settled in Kibbutz Mishmar David, where Topol worked as a garage mechanic. Topol assembled a kibbutz theatre company made up of friends from his Nahal troupe; the group toured four days a week, worked on their respective kibbutzim for two days a week, and had one day off. The theatre company was in existence from early 1957 to the mid-1960s. Topol both sang and acted with the group, doing both "loudly".
Topol and his wife Galia Finkelstein had three children: a son, Omer, and two daughters, Anat and Adi. The couple resided in Galia's childhood home in Tel Aviv. Topol's hobbies included sketching and sculpting. Through Adi, his granddaughter Yali Topol Margalith is an actress.
In June 2022, Topol's son, Omer, revealed that his father was suffering from Alzheimer's disease.
On March 8, 2023, Topol's family notified the press that he was near death and "living his final hours", and asked the public to respect the family's privacy. He died overnight at the age of 87. The day before his burial at Kvutzat Shiller on March 10, a memorial was held at the Cameri Theater in Tel Aviv.
Singing and acting career Between 1960 and 1964, Topol performed with the Batzal Yarok ("Green Onion") satirical theatre company, which also toured Israel. Other members of the group included Uri Zohar, Nechama Hendel, Zaharira Harifai, Arik Einstein, and Oded Kotler. In 1960, Topol co-founded the Haifa Municipal Theatre with Yosef Milo, serving as assistant to the director and acting in plays by Shakespeare, Ionesco, and Brecht. In 1965 he performed in the Cameri Theatre in Tel Aviv.
Topol's first film appearance was in the 1961 film I Like Mike, followed by the 1963 Israeli film El Dorado. His breakthrough role came as the lead character in the 1964 film Sallah Shabati. Adapted for the screen by Ephraim Kishon from his original play, the social satire depicts the hardships of a Sephardic immigrant family in the rough conditions of ma'abarot, immigrant absorption camps in Israel in the 1950s, satirizing "just about every pillar of Israeli society: the Ashkenazi establishment, the pedantic bureaucracy, corrupt political parties, rigid kibbutz ideologues and ... the Jewish National Fund's tree-planting program". Topol, who was 29 during the filming, was familiar playing the role of the family patriarch, having performed skits from the play with his Nahal entertainment troupe during his army years. He contributed his ideas to the part, playing the character as a more universal Mizrahi Jew instead of specifically a Yemenite, Iraqi, or Moroccan Jew, and asking Kishon to change the character's first name from Saadia (a recognizably Yemenite name) to Sallah (a more general Mizrahi name).
The film won the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and Topol won the 1964 Golden Gate Award for Best Actor at the San Francisco International Film Festival and the 1965 Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer—Male, alongside Harve Presnell and George Segal. Sallah Shabati was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, losing to the Italian-language Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow.
In 1966, Topol made his English-language film debut as Abou Ibn Kaqden in the Mickey Marcus biopic Cast a Giant Shadow.
Tevye the Dairyman
Topol came to greatest prominence in his portrayal of Tevye the Dairyman on stage and screen. He first played the lead role in the Israeli production of the musical Fiddler on the Roof in 1966, replacing Shmuel Rodensky for 10 weeks when Rodensky fell ill. Harold Prince, producer of the original Fiddler on the Roof that opened on Broadway in 1964, had seen Topol in Sallah Shabati and called him to audition for the role of the fifty-something Tevye in a new production scheduled to open at Her Majesty's Theatre in London on February 16, 1967. Not yet fluent in English, Topol memorized the score from listening to the original Broadway cast album and practiced the lyrics with a British native.
When Topol arrived at the audition, Prince was surprised that this 30-year-old man had played Shabati, a character in his sixties. Topol explained, "A good actor can play an old man, a sad face, a happy man. Makeup is not an obstacle". Topol also surprised the producers with his familiarity with the staging, since he had already acted in the Israeli production, and was hired. He spent six months in London learning his part phonetically with vocal coach Cicely Berry. Jerome Robbins, director and choreographer of the 1964 Broadway show who came over to direct the London production, "re-directed" the character of Tevye for Topol and helped the actor deliver a less caricatured performance. Topol's performance received positive reviews.
A few months after the opening, Topol was called up for reserve duty in the Six-Day War and returned to Israel. He was assigned to an army entertainment troupe on the Golan Heights. Afterward he returned to the London production, appearing in a total of 430 performances.
It was during the London run that he began being known by his last name only, as the English producers were unable to pronounce the voiceless uvular fricative consonant Ḥet at the beginning of his first name, Chaim, instead calling him "Shame".
In casting the 1971 film version of Fiddler on the Roof, director Norman Jewison and his production team sought an actor other than Zero Mostel for the lead role. This decision was somewhat controversial, as Mostel had made the role famous in the long-running Broadway musical and was expected to star in the film. But Jewison and his team felt Mostel's flamboyant personalty, while suitable for the stage, would eclipse the character in a screen performance. In February 1968, Jewison flew to London to see Topol perform as Tevye during his last week with the London production, and chose him over Danny Kaye, Herschel Bernardi, Rod Steiger, Danny Thomas, Walter Matthau, Richard Burton, and Frank Sinatra, all of whom had also expressed interest in the part.
Topol, then aged 36, was made to look 20 years older and heavier with makeup and costuming. As in his role as Shabati, Topol used the technique of "locking his muscles" to convincingly play an older character. He later explained:
As a young man, I had to make sure that I didn't break the illusion for the audience. You have to tame yourself. I'm now someone who is supposed to be 50, 60 years old. I cannot jump. I cannot suddenly be young. You produce a certain sound [in your voice] that is not young.
For his performance, Topol won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, the Sant Jordi Award for Best Performance in a Foreign Film, and the 1972 David di Donatello for Best Foreign Actor, sharing the latter with Elizabeth Taylor. He was also nominated for the 1971 Academy Award for Best Actor, losing to Gene Hackman in The French Connection.
In 1983, Topol reprised the role of Tevye in a revival of Fiddler on the Roof on the West End in London. In 1989, he played the role in a 30-city U.S. touring production. As he was by then the approximate age of the character, he commented, "I didn't have to spend the energy playing the age". In 1990–1991, he again starred as Tevye in a Broadway revival of Fiddler at the Gershwin Theatre. In that production Rosalind Harris, who had played eldest daughter Tzeitel in the film, played Tevye's wife Golde opposite Topol. In 1991, Topol was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical, losing to Jonathan Pryce in Miss Saigon. Topol again played Tevye in a 1994 London revival, which became a touring production. In that production, the role of one of his daughters was played by his own daughter, Adi Topol Margalith.
Topol reprised the role of Tevye for a 1997–1998 touring production in Israel, as well as a 1998 show at the Regent Theatre in Melbourne. In September 2005 he returned to Australia for a Fiddler on the Roof revival at the Capitol Theatre in Sydney, followed by an April 2006 production at the Lyric Theatre in Brisbane, and a June 2006 production at Her Majesty's Theatre in Melbourne. In May 2007, he starred in a production at the Auckland Civic Theatre.