Why Yitzhak From The Crowded Room Looks So Familiar
Apple TV+'s psychological thriller miniseries "The Crowded Room" boasts quite the star-studded cast. "Spider-Man: No Way Home" star Tom Holland leads the production as Danny Sullivan, a troubled man who has been arrested for ostensibly being the culprit in a shooting case. He's joined by such big names as Amanda Seyfried, Emmy Rossum, Sasha Lane, Emma Laird, Will Chase, Laila Robins, and more. However, there's a couple of cast members who viewers may find familiar, but can't quite place their actor's name or where they've seen them before.
One of these familiar characters is Yitzhak, Danny's landlord that shares a surprisingly deeper connection to him than one might think. Yitzhak is portrayed by actor Lior Raz. The vast majority of the performer's filmography is composed of Israeli productions, though recent years have some of these projects garner attention in the West, while Raz has also made the jump to a couple Western films of his own.
Fauda (2015)
One of Lior Raz's biggest credits to date is his starring role on "Fauda," an Israeli action-thriller series that's renowned by some as one of the best action shows on Netflix. Raz is actually the co-creator of the series, having brought it to life alongside Avi Issacharoff, but fans of the show will likely recognize him better for the character he plays.
Across the show's multiple seasons, Raz portrays Doron Kavillio, a retired soldier who gets roped back into action to take down a terrorist plot. Doron gets put through the ringer — both physically and mentally — on multiple occasions. He also often finds himself getting close to lines that he probably shouldn't cross, but it's always clear that the character has an unwavering spirit of justice, no matter how far from grace he falls.
Surprisingly enough, Raz didn't originally intend to star in the series. "You know, when I wrote it [...] we didn't know that I would be the actor," he explained during an appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers. "Then, Netflix called and asked me to be there and it was great."
Operation Finale (2018)
Several years after "Fauda" kicked off, Lior Raz hopped onto a similar project in the form of director Chris Weitz's 2018 historical drama film "Operation Finale." The movie, which is based on a true story, sees a group of Israeli soldiers go on a covert mission to capture an escaped Nazi officer and bring him to justice. Raz was joined by some other major names for the project, including MCU actors Oscar Isaac and Ben Kingsley.
Mirroring his role in "Fauda," Raz once again plays a character with a military background: Isser Harel. The difference is that Harel was actually a real person. In real world history, the Israeli man served as director of the Mossad for over a decade, in which he worked as spymaster for Israel's intelligence and security departments. True to the character's role in the movie, the executive really did oversee the capture of Nazi Adolf Eichmann.
In an interview with Collider, Raz spoke about how the bond with his castmates translated onto the team's on-screen dynamic. "We were a group of people who worked together and we became good friends outside the set, but also in the set, and you see that and you understand that they are very close people," he said.
6 Underground (2019)
If you haven't noticed by now, Lior Raz has a tendency to appear in projects that revolve around a team hunting a villain down. The big difference for his role in Michael Bay's 2019 action flick "6 Underground" is that he actually played the baddie this time around.
In the movie, Raz plays Rovach Alimov, the evil dictator of a fictional country called Turgistan. The ultra-powerful political figure faces off against the Ghosts, a group of anonymous vigilantes (played by Ryan Reynolds, Mélanie Laurent, and Ben Hardy, and more) who have united to end his reign. The group's efforts prove quite successful and they end up toppling Alimov's empire, with the dictator ultimately facing a karmic fate of his own making.
As the actor told The Knockturnal around the time that Netflix premiered the movie, getting to be the antagonist for once was a refreshing change of pace. "I got the opportunity to do, once in a lifetime, do a bad guy in a Michael Bay film, so it's a really, really, really bad guy," he said. "Michael gave me the freedom to do whatever, you know as an actor, to bring it on. To do whatever I think it should be."
Hit & Run (2021)
This list of recognizable credit highlights for Lior Raz caps off with a bit of a full-circle moment. Just as with his breakout role on "Fauda," the creative once again united with his co-creator Avi Issacharoff to develop the thriller series "Hit & Run" for Netflix. Further in keeping with his past, he once again wound up playing the lead in his own production.
The series features Raz as Segev Azulai, an everyman grieving the death of his wife after she gets caught in a fatal hit and run accident. It's not long before Segev begins to learn about the true nature of his deceased partner and unravels a greater conspiracy than he could have ever imagined.
While there are shades of Raz's past roles in Segev, he was drawn to how the character doesn't have a flashy background or in-depth military experience to lean on in his quest for the truth. "He needs to find out who killed his wife, why they killed his wife, and to try to find those people," the actor told ComingSoon. "So he's in a beast mode. He's a hunter, but also is grieving at the same time. So this complexity, I think this is what makes Segev so interesting."