Ayelet Zurer (Hebrew: איילת זורר; born 28 June 1969) is an Israeli actress, perhaps best known for her roles in Nina’s Tragedies, Adam Resurrected, Munich, and Angels & Demons.
Zurer, who has appeared in many Israeli films and television series, is one of the most acclaimed Israeli actresses of her day. She was nominated for awards at the Jerusalem Film Festival, the Israeli Academy Awards and the Israeli Television Academy Awards. She won Best Actress awards for her roles in the Israeli film Nina’s Tragedies and Betipul, an Israeli drama series which was adapted into the award winning HBO series, In Treatment. Aside from Betipul, her past television roles include Israeli series Inyan Shel Zman, Florentin, Zinzana, Hadar Milhama and others.
Early life
Zurer was born and raised in Tel Aviv. Her father was a government worker and her mother spent World War II hiding in a convent in Czechoslovakia. After the war, Zurer's mother was reunited with her parents, former sawyers who survived the war by hiding. The family relocated to Tel Aviv, where Zurer was born and raised.
After finishing her military service, she moved to New York, where she developed her acting skills.
Film career
In 1998 she achieved the lead role in the film Ahava Asura (aka The Dybbuk of the Holy Apple Field) starring Moshe Ivgy. In 2001, she starred in the movies Laila Lelo Lola and Kikar Ha'Halomot. In 2003, Zurer starred in Nina's Tragedies, portraying the title character, Nina, in one of her best known roles. Nina's role depicts a passionate young woman who must carve out a new life for herself after her husband's sudden death. She has won an Israeli Academy Award for Best Actress for this role.
Zurer's first international role was in Steven Spielberg's Munich, (which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture), where she played Eric Bana's wife. She later played the role of an exotic terrorist, Veronica, in the American thriller Vantage Point, appearing alongside Dennis Quaid, William Hurt, and Sigourney Weaver. Her next international role was in Paul Schrader's Adam Resurrected, where she played Gina Grey, a nurse who falls in love with the title character, Adam Stein, a disturbed Holocaust survivor played by Jeff Goldblum. In 2007, Zurer starred in Fugitive Pieces, the story of a boy who survives the Holocaust in Greece and becomes a troubled young adult who falls in love with her character.
In April 2008, Zurer was cast as the female lead, Vittoria Vetra, in the The Da Vinci Code sequel, Angels & Demons, chosen over more well-known stars, including Naomi Watts, who had been in talks for the role. Zurer's character is the colleague of a CERN physicist/Catholic priest who is murdered during the theft of a canister of unstable antimatter from their lab at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva. She is paired by the Vatican Police with Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) on a journey to uncover the mystery behind her co-worker's death and stop a terrorist plot to detonate the antimatter somewhere in the Vatican.
Zurer has landed the leading female role in director Chris Eyre's new film A Year in Mooring, due out in 2011. The film's cast includes Josh Lucas.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayelet_Zurer
