Saul Hersh Rubinek (born July 2, 1948) is a Canadian actor, director, producer, and playwright.
He is widely known for his television roles, notably Artie Nielsen on Warehouse 13, Donny Douglas on Frasier, Lon Cohen on A Nero Wolfe Mystery, and Louis B. Mayer on The Last Tycoon. He also starred in the films Against All Odds (1984), Wall Street (1987), The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990), Unforgiven (1992), Nixon (1995), True Romance (1993), The Express (2008), Barney's Version (2010), and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018).
Rubinek is a five-time Genie Award nominee, winning Best Supporting Actor for Ticket to Heaven (1981), and a two-time Gemini Award nominee. His directorial film debut, Jerry and Tom (1998), was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival. He was previously a stage actor and director, working with the Stratford Shakespeare Festival and Theatre Passe Muraille, and co-founding the Canadian Stage Company.
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Early life
Rubinek was born in Föhrenwald, a displaced-persons camp in Allied-occupied Germany. His parents, Frania and Israel Rubinek, were both Yiddish-speaking Polish Jews who were hidden by Polish farmers for over two years during World War II. So Many Miracles, a book written by Rubinek and published by Penguin Canada in 1988, recounts his parents' experiences in Poland during the Holocaust.
The family emigrated to Canada soon after Rubinek was born. His family settled down in Canada's capital city, Ottawa. He spoke Yiddish, French and then learned heavily accented English, which caused him to be bullied when he was in school. In his youth, he attended Camp B'nai Brith, a Jewish summer overnight camp in Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts, Quebec. At the encouragement of his parents, Rubinek began taking acting lessons and joined the Ottawa Little Theatre in 1965.
Career
Rubinek began performing at the Stratford Festival in 1969. He contributed to the Toronto theatre scene, co-founding the Toronto Free Theatre (now the Canadian Stage Company) and working with Theatre Passe Muraille as an actor and producer. He began working in the United States in the 1970s, acting in Off-Broadway productions. In 1984, he won a Drama-Logue Award for Des McAnuff's La Jolla production of As You Like It.
Early in his career, Rubinek gained the attention of Canadian audiences when he starred as detective Benny Cooperman in two TV films: The Suicide Murders (1985) and Murder Sees the Light (1986). These are based on the series of mystery novels by author Howard Engel set in the Niagara Region of Canada. Rubinek starred as Owen Hughes, the antagonist, in Obsessed (1987). In the 1987 Canadian film Taking Care, he played Carl, the husband of the main protagonist, played by his then spouse Kate Lynch. It was a medical drama based on the Toronto hospital baby deaths that was the foundation of the Susan Nelles false-conviction case. In another TV film, Liberace: Behind the Music (1988), he played Seymour Heller, the long-time friend and manager of Liberace.
In 1982, Rubinek played Allan in the sex-themed romantic comedy Soup for One, directed and written by Jonathan Kaufer and produced by Marvin Worth. Rubinek appeared in: Taylor Hackford's Against All Odds (1984); Alan Alda's Sweet Liberty (1986) as director Bo Hodges; Oliver Stone's Wall Street (1987), as a lawyer; The Outside Chance of Maximilian Glick (1988), as a fun-loving rabbi; Brian De Palma's The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990), again as a lawyer; and in a lead part as a rabbi in The Quarrel (1991). He is noted for his performance in Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven (1992) as a pulp fiction writer. He had a notable role in Tony Scott's True Romance (1993) as Lee Donowitz, a pompous, cocaine-addicted film producer based on Joel Silver.
Rubinek co-starred in the 1993 Emmy Award-winning American made-for-television docudrama And the Band Played On as Dr. Jim Curran. He played the character Kivas Fajo in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Most Toys." Rubinek, an ardent Star Trek fan, took over the part on short notice after David Rappaport, the actor originally cast in the role, attempted suicide shortly after the filming of the episode had begun. (Rappaport later committed suicide just before the episode premiered.) Photographs of Rubinek in character were used on two cards in Decipher's 1994 ST:TNG card game: a character card entitled "Kivas Fajo" and an event card entitled "Kivas Fajo: Collector." In 1998, "The Fajo Collection," a limited (40,000 copies) edition set of 18 new cards, was released as an addition to this card game.
Filmography
Accolades
Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television
1980 Genie Award for Best Actor (Non-Feature): The Wordsmith (nominated)
1980 Genie Award for Best Supporting Actor: Agency (nominated)
1982 Genie Award for Best Supporting Actor: Ticket to Heaven (won)
1983 Genie Award for Best Supporting Actor: By Design (nominated)
1989 Genie Award for Best Supporting Actor: The Outside Chance of Maximilian Glick (nominated)
1998 Gemini Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Supporting Role in a Dramatic Program: Hiroshima (nominated)
1998 Genie Award for Best Supporting Actor: Pale Saints (nominated)
2008 Gemini Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Supporting Role in a Dramatic Program: The Trojan Horse (nominated)
Broadcast Film Critics Association
2001 Alan J. Pakula Award for Artistic Excellence: The Contender (won)
FilmOut LGBT Film Festival
2010 Audience Award for Best Supporting Actor: Oy Vey! My Son Is Gay!! (nominated)
Sundance Film Festival
1998 Grand Jury Prize: Jerry and Tom (nominated)