It was over 100 degrees in Fresno during the 2018 shoot for “Dirty Bomb,” a Holocaust film that takes place in the winter. Actor Ido Samuel, dressed as a prisoner at a concentration camp, had been sustaining himself on just one small salad per day for a week. The short film followed Jewish prisoners forced to build Nazi V-2 rockets in the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. The production had no air conditioning, and not much of a budget. Samuel didn’t care. “The hunger helped me get immersed in the scenes,” Samuel told The Journal. To prepare for that role, he spent over three hours talking with a 96-year-old Mittelbau-Dora survivor. The man told him, “I didn’t have the luxury of thinking about my family or what I lost. All I could think about was my hunger. Survival was instinct.”
Those words stayed with Samuel. And not just for that film.
“Dirty Bomb” went on to win Best Short Film at the Madrid International Film Festival, and Samuel was nominated for Best Actor. He stands six-foot two with a muscular build. Off-screen, he is quick to share a friendly smile. But on screen, his eyes have an icy blue intensity reminiscent of those of actor Ralph Fiennes in “The English Patient” or Steve McQueen in “The Great Escape.”
Samuel grew up in Herzliya, Israel where his mother was a hotel secretary and his father was an electrical technician. His twin sister Michal was just minutes older than him, but growing up was much more outgoing and confident compared to her shy brother. Every Saturday, their father took them to the movies. That’s where Samuel first saw the performances of actors that left him in awe. Two particular Tim Burton’s films that eventually became his acting compass were Jack Nicholson as the Joker in “Batman” and Johnny Depp as “Edward Scissorhands.”
“Great actors make you forget that you’re watching an actor,” Samuel said about Depp and Nicholson.
When he was eight, a magician pulled the still-shy Samuel on stage at a Hanukkah party at the hotel where his mother worked. He started talking with the magician, cracking jokes, making the room laugh. “For the first time, I didn’t feel shy,” Samuel said. “I felt at home.”
Still, acting wasn’t something he pursued. “We always grew up knowing we have to have a stable career, we have to study, I didn’t even dare think about acting,” he said. Samuel took a leap and enrolled in an acting conservatory in Tel Aviv in 2007. Over the next five years, he would have roles in over 100 student films. In 2012, he was cast in his first feature, “Fill the Void,” directed by Rama Burshtein. The film went on to win the Best Picture Ophir, Israel’s version of the Oscars. Life was getting exciting, but life back home in Herzliya was becoming more chaotic. His father’s health was declining from diabetes: first he lost a finger, then a foot— all while his eyesight gradually diminished. “It was so overwhelming to see my Dad like that, but I used acting as an outlet for those emotions,” Samuel said. “Every audition, I treated it as the last audition I’ll ever get.”
One of his first U.S. jobs was in a music video for the song “Bitter Pill” by Irish singer-songwriter Gavin James. One day before the final day of filming, Samuel got a call: his grandmother — a Holocaust survivor — had just died. She became a pediatrician late in life, and had encouraged him to follow his desire to be an actor when he started acting school. The music video was already heavy—Samuel and his co-star have a painful slow-motion breakup in the back of a 1967 Lincoln Continental. But as the camera rolled, Samuel’s tears were real. During our interview, as Samuel recited the song’s chorus he could barely complete the lyrics without getting quite choked up: “I’m sorry that I’m here so late/And please don’t turn my heart away.” He flew back to Israel the next day for the funeral.
He barely took time to grieve before returning to Los Angeles. The next three years would be his busiest with constant work in short and feature films, and even a guest spot on the Amazon Studios show “Transparent.” The year 2018 would challenge Samuel at home and on the screen. After immersing himself in his role in “Dirty Bomb” by eating just a small salad every day, Samuel’s father passed away the night after production wrapped. He’d go back to Israel for the funeral, but he didn’t stay long.
“I wanted to grieve, but I was also afraid that if I took a break, I’d miss calls for auditions and I couldn’t let that happen,” Samuel said. When the pandemic hit in 2020, there were no auditions to miss. He had a car and no scripts to read. So he took the break that he needed and drove to Yosemite National Park, then Redwood National Park, and on to the Petrified Forest in Arizona. At the Grand Canyon, went on the first hike he Googled — 21 miles down to the river and back. He didn’t realize that barely anyone does a round trip from the rim to the river in one day without camping. He did it. “I couldn’t walk for a week, but the struggle and the scenery was so healing and powerful.”
As production resumed in Los Angeles, his first acting gig was in an EDM music video, Illenium’s “Hearts on Fire.” He was cast in an action film. “Tehran,” and appeared in an episode of the CBS series “FBI: International.” Then came his biggest role: as Isaac, a Jew who joins the Judenrat and is cast out by his own community, in “We Were the Lucky Ones,” Hulu’s adaptation of Georgia Hunter’s novel about a Polish Jewish family separated during the Holocaust. To access that kind of rupture, Samuel returned to music. He would get in character by listening to “For Myself,” a song by the Israeli band The Dollhouse (Beit Habubot).
He says the biggest price of success as a character actor in Hollywood remains being so far away from his mother, twin sister and two nephews in Israel. “I feel guilty being away from them for so long,” he said. “Without both my sister and my mom’s support, I wouldn’t last as an actor in Los Angeles.” His nephews are too young to watch his films and television shows. But they still get performances from their Uncle Ido. “I send them videos of myself doing funny scenes from films that they like,” Samuel said. “I’m doing ‘The Lion King,’ I’m lip-syncing to the songs, and they love that.”
It became apparent to Samuel just how far he has come when he received a WhatsApp text message from his eight-year-old nephew with a screenshot: “Ido, you’re on Google!” His nephew wrote. “It was exciting to get my first text from my nephew,” Samuel said. “But also — now all of the sudden my young nephew is using Google too?”
When he’s not on set, he can often be seen at Jewish community events around Los Angeles; people recognize him from film and television. He’s realizing his dream every day. The characters he often plays have stakes way too high to just relax. So he refuses to do so as well. “I treat every opportunity I ever have to be the best that I can,” Samuel said. “I’m competing with the best of the best in Hollywood. I can’t just relax.”
Ido Samuel stars in “Dirty Bomb,” now available to stream on ChaiFlicks. Follow him on Instagram at www.instagram.com/ido_samuel
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