Mark Ivanir — actor with roots in the Russian Empire
Mark Ivanir is a Ukrainian-born Israeli-American actor born in Chernivtsi (formerly Czernowitz, the multilingual Austro-Hungarian/Romanian/Soviet city) who emigrated to Israel and then the United States. He appeared in two Steven Spielberg films — Schindler's List and The Terminal — and has built a long television and film career.
Tracing the roots — Chernivtsi (Ukr)
Born in Chernivtsi (Ukrainian SSR) in 1968 — the city famously described as 'a little Vienna on the Prut' and the birthplace of Paul Celan — Ivanir grew up in the Soviet Jewish world before emigrating to Israel and then America. His casting by Spielberg in both his Holocaust film and his immigrant comedy is a poetic connection to his own biography.
Hollywood actor (Schindler's List, Homeland); fluent Russian.
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Chernivtsi (Ukr). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.