"Jews in the Limelight”: Shia's Transformed, Daniel's a Wizard Again, and Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen win the Camera D'or
By Nate Bloom

Two of the hottest young Jewish actors star in films opening in July.

Shia LaBeouf, who just turned 21, is the star of Transformers, a sci-fi flick that opens on Friday, July 6th. (By the way, the actor's name is pronounced Shy-uh La-Buff).

This has been a breakthrough year for LaBeouf. Last April, Shia starred in the thriller Disturbia. It was a surprise hit and was the number one film in the country for three weeks. Also in April, it was announced that Shia would co-star in the upcoming film sequel Indiana Jones IV.

LaBeouf is the son of a non-Jewish father and a Jewish mother. He was raised Jewish, had a Bar Miitzvah, and very much identifies as Jewish.

While Shia has freely talked about his Jewish background in interviews dating back several years--"nobody” knew the star of the Harry Potter films, Daniel Radcliffe, was Jewish on his mother's side until last December, when Radcliffe talked about his interfaith background on Australian TV.

Radcliffe, who is English, told an Australian interview program that his father is Protestant and his mother is Jewish--but that he isn't religious at all.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which opens in theaters on July 11, is the fifth "Harry Potter” film that Radcliffe has starred in. Order of the Phoenix features the return of English Jewish actor Jason Isaacs as the "evildoer” Lucius Malfoy.

Radcliffe will celebrate his 18 th birthday this month--on July 18.

Memphis' Jewish Belle

HBO's critically acclaimed series, "Big Love,” began its second season on Monday, June 11. (The first season is out on DVD.) Bill Paxton stars as Bill Hendrickson, a Utah businessman who has three wives, each of whom has given him children. Hendrickson is a "‘fundamentalist” Mormon who believes that the mainstream Mormon Church erred when it repudiated polygamy in the late 19th century.

Playing Hendrickson's third and youngest wife, Margene, is pretty actress Ginnifer Goodwin, 29. A friend at the Memphis Jewish Federation tells me that Goodwin, a Memphis native, is Jewish and was a bat mitzvah.Indeed, Goodwin went to Jewish summer camp with another current employee of the Memphis Federation. (Jewish geography strikes again!)

A graduate of Boston University, Goodwin has frequently appeared in TV guest shots. Her biggest film role was as Johnny Cash's first wife in Walk the Line.

Romeo and Juliet, Israeli Style

Oscar-winner Helen Mirren, who isn't Jewish, has signed to play a Jewish woman whose journalist daughter was killed while she was romantically involved with a Gaza Palestinian. The yet-unnamed movie will bemade in Jordan, rather than in Gaza. (It's safer to film on an artillery range than in Gaza).

Jewish screen legend Tony Curtis, 81, is now filming, David and Fatima, an Israeli film about the tragic romance of an Israeli soldier and a Muslim girl that will open in 2008. Curtis has agreed to perform without his toupee for the first time. Oscar-winning Jewish actor Martin Landau, 76, has a supporting role as a rabbi.

By the way, last month was the 40th anniversary of the release of Sgt. Pepper Lonely Hearts Club Band, the famous Beatles' album. For trivia buffs, Curtis was one of nine Jews whose images appeared on the iconic Sgt. Pepper cover. The others: Albert Einstein, Bob Dylan, Sigmund Freud, comedian Lenny Bruce, Marilyn Monroe (who converted to Judaism), Issy Bonn, an English music hall comic/singer popular in the '40s, and fine artists Wallace Berman and Richard Lindner.

Simon and Paula Have Things in Common

Singer Paula Abdul, the nicest member of the judging trio on "American Idol,” is the star of a new reality series, "Hey Paula,”which premiered on the Bravo cable channel on June 28. The show gives us a candid, back-stage look at Paula and she may be blowing her "sweet image.” In the first episode, she is seen berating her assistants and fighting with network executives.

Abdul, as I've reported before, is the daughter of a Jewish father of Syrian Jewish descent and a Canadian-born Jewish mother.

As everybody knows, the overtly ‘nasty' judge on "American Idol” is British music executive Simon Cowell.

The Daily Telegraph, a Brit paper, regularly publishes articles by family history expert Nick Barratt on celebrity family trees. A 2006 Barratt profile of Cowell just came to my attention. Barratt writes that Simon's paternal grandparents were wed in an English synagogue in 1915. His paternal grandmother was born in Poland while his paternal grandfather was an English-born Jew.

While not crystal-clear, it appears that Simon's mother is of mixed English and Scottish non-Jewish ancestry. Simon's father was an executive at EMI, the big English music company, and Simon began (1979) his own music career in the EMI mailroom and then rose through the EMI ranks. Some early attempts to strikeout on his own failed, but eventually Simon hit it huge as a judge on the British talent show, "Pop Idol,” and its American equivalent, "American Idol.”

Barratt gives no details about Simon Cowell's religious training, if any.

Israel Newbies Win Golden Camera Award

Israeli writers Etgar Keret and his wife, Shira Geffen, won the Camera D'or award at the recent Cannes Film Festival for their film Meduzot (Jellyfish). The award is given for the best film by debut directors and comes with a $200,000 prize.

Meduzot, which was written by Geffen and directed by Keret, is about the lives of three Tel Aviv women.

Keret was a little taken aback by the glitz of Cannes, telling the press that his tuxedo was, "The first suit I have worn since my Bar Mitzvah.”

Keret lectures at the Tel Aviv film school and he is a major literary figure in Israel. He's often called the "voice of the young.” His short story collections have sold hundreds of thousands of copies--an incredible figure given the small Israeli population. Over 40 short films based on Keret's stories have been produced--nominated and winning numerous national and international awards.

In August, the film, Wristcutters, adapted from a short story by Keret, will hit American theaters. Starring Will Arnett, Shannyn Sossamon and Tom Waits, Wristcutters was a big hit at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival.

California-based Nate Bloom writes a column about Jewish celebrities, broadly defined, for five Jewish newspapers around the country. Most items in his column for GenerationJ.com originally appeared in his newspaper column.