Fred Melamed
Fred Melamed
Fred Melamedis an American actor and writer. He is best known for portraying Sy Ableman in A Serious Man, Bruce Ben-Bacharach in Lady Dynamite, Sam Soto in In a World..., and for appearing in seven films directed by Woody Allen...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth13 May 1956
CountryUnited States of America
keys long together
There are some directors who don't like the set much. They like post-production, where you have all the ingredients in the can - you've got all the footage, all the music, the various effects - and then you have to do the alchemy necessary to make it all good, a long and very key process of putting everything together and making it into the cogent thing that you want.
baby new-york fire
I was always around people who were in the business from the time I was an absolute baby. I grew up in New York City, and my parents, my sister, and I had a house on Fire Island, and they were part of a set of people that were all close and friendly, most of whom were involved in show business in one regard or another. So it was always familiar to me, and I kind of enjoyed it.
fun school play
I always did plays in school because I thought it was fun, but it just never occurred to me as a thing to do.
character people way
In general, I'm always interested in characters who have kind of extreme aspects to them, who are in some ways larger than typical people.
country thinking voice
The voice-over world has changed radically in the time that I've been in it. It used to be this rather small, select group of people who did 90 percent of the work. Now it's kind of the reverse: 90 percent of the work is done by this very broad mix of people all over the country, and the guys who used to be the go-to guys are a much smaller percentage now. But there was this massive interest in voice-over as well as in the story, so I think that also added to the film's appeal.
world sometimes universal
I've always thought that, in a sense, the more specific and sometimes even the smaller the world of a movie is, the more universal it is.
careers long acting
In my career, I've had kind of a strange trajectory as an actor. I started out doing movies and theater and stuff, but then I had a terrible problem with stage fright as an actor on stage, and I quit stage acting for a long, long time.
running eight long
Though I acted in hundreds of productions, appeared at the Guthrie Theatre and on Broadway in Amadeus, I discovered in my thirties that I didn't really like stage acting. The presence of the audience, the eight shows a week and the possibility of a long run were all unnatural to me.
strong jewish-tradition keeping-your-mouth-shut
I don't really know of the Jewish tradition of comedy, only the Jewish tradition of not keeping your mouth shut. Complaining about all that is hard, unfair or ridiculous in life-having strong feelings, and not being able to suppress them. That, to me, is Jewish.
ignorant adherence legalism
I am tolerably ignorant about Judaism, and much of what I do know about it seems hard to swallow, because it is so grounded in legalism, and adherence to rituals.
mets
I'd always admired Diane Keaton, but I'd never met her.
long stage plans
I haven't appeared on stage in quite a long time and I don't have any immediate plans to do so, but I'm always interested in going back.