Ido Samuel Of ‘We Were The Lucky Ones’ On The Five Things You Need To Shine In The Entertainment Industry
…Cinematically, they’re the most beautiful stories at the end of the day. That’s why they keep making movies about it. Whenever I hear a story from the Holocaust, I think “This should be a movie” because they’re stories about survival, about what people went through in the darkest time in the world. It’s very easy to make movies about dragons and stuff. But when people really went through something that hard and then survived to tell the stories, those are the most beautiful films anyone can watch…
I had the pleasure of talking with Ido Samuel. In the bustling world of global cinema, Ido Samuel’s journey from the streets of Herzliya, Israel, to the pinnacle of international film and television prominence is a narrative of persistence, talent, and a deep-rooted passion for acting. His story, emblematic of a relentless pursuit of artistic expression, unfolds across continents, cultures, and cinematic genres, reflecting a versatility and dedication that have become the hallmarks of his career.
Born and raised in Herzliya, Samuel navigated the complexities of a small family life, marked by his parents’ hard work and eventual divorce during his high school years. Amidst these personal upheavals, Samuel discovered an unwavering desire to act — a dream initially met with skepticism from those around him. Undeterred, he immersed himself in the craft, attending acting workshops and finally enrolling in a rigorous acting school, laying the foundation for a career that would soon cross international borders.
Samuel’s artistic journey took a pivotal turn with his role in “Fill The Void,” a film that not only introduced him to the Orthodox Jewish community but also established him as a formidable talent in Israeli cinema. This film, along with “Dirty Bomb,” a project that garnered him a Best Lead Actor nomination at the Madrid Film Festival, highlighted Samuel’s ability to bring depth and nuance to complex characters.
The transition to the American entertainment industry was marked by both determination and serendipity. Despite the initial challenges, including an amusing attempt to gain representation from a leading talent agency, Samuel’s persistence paid off when he met Valerie McCaffrey, a respected casting director who would become his manager. This partnership catalyzed Samuel’s entry into Hollywood, leading to roles in groundbreaking projects like “Transparent” (Amazon) and the critically acclaimed CBS series “FBI: International.”
In “FBI: International,” Samuel’s portrayal of Levi Solomon, a billionaire entangled in a web of suspicion and familial legacy, showcased his ability to navigate the intricacies of character-driven storytelling. His performance not only captivated audiences but also solidified his status as a guest star in one of the series’ most watched episodes.
Samuel’s recent endeavors have seen him take on roles that span the spectrum of human emotion and historical depth. In “Tehran,” a grand Indian production, he shared the screen with luminaries of Indian cinema, embracing the challenges of an international film set. However, it is his role in “We Were The Lucky Ones,” a Hulu original series, that stands as a testament to Samuel’s craft and the emotional resonance of his performances. Portraying Isaac, a character grappling with faith, loss, and the harsh realities of World War II, Samuel delivers a portrayal that is both heart-wrenching and hopeful.
From the bustling streets of Herzliya to the grand sets of international productions, Samuel’s journey is a compelling tale of ambition, resilience, and the transformative power of storytelling. As “We Were The Lucky Ones” prepares to captivate audiences with its tale of survival and reunion, Samuel’s contribution to the series — and to the broader landscape of film and television — remains a vivid illustration of cinema’s ability to traverse boundaries and connect hearts.
Yitzi: Ido, it’s a delight and honor to meet you. And congratulations on the premiere. Before we dive in, readers, I’d love to learn about your personal origin story. Can you share the story of your childhood and how you grew up?
Ido: Sure. I grew up in Herzliya, Israel. I have a twin sister, and we’re a very small family. My dad used to go to work every day at 5 a.m. and come back really tired at 7pm. My mom also worked hard, so it was just me and my sister most of the time.
Before high school, there was a theater class, and I wanted to go there. But I kept hearing from my parents and family, “Oh, it’s not a profession.” So I studied something else in high school and kept feeling jealous of all the people who studied acting.
The first chance I got after finishing high school, I started attending acting workshops all over. The best one was with a teacher called Liat Bain, who taught acting for the camera. She became my mentor and the most supportive person I had in my career. Then I went to a legit acting school, attending classes six days a week for very long hours.
I always had the dream to come to the U.S., but I didn’t have the chance for a long time. Right after acting school, I did a lot of short films that won at many festivals. And then I got cast in my first feature film, called “Fill The Void,” where I played a Hasidic Jewish person. It was also my introduction to the Orthodox community because I grew up secular.
The director was an Orthodox Jewish woman, and much of the crew was also religious Jews. It was an amazing experience. I met one of my best friends till this day, Hadas, who played the lead in “Fill The Void.” And now, she’s also the lead in the TV show I’m in, so it’s come full circle from acting together in my first feature to this big TV show.
We did “FiLL The Void,” and it ended up winning all the awards in Israel, including Best Picture at the Academy Awards there. Hadas won Best Actress at Venice, and we won awards at many festivals too. Israel sent it to represent it at the Oscars.
I had another short called “The Divide” that was also in many U.S. festivals around that time. So I decided it was my time to go to the U.S. I didn’t know anything about the industry — it was my first time in the U.S., so I had no idea what was going on or who was in the industry.
But I also emailed a few casting directors of films I loved, hoping to meet them. One was Valerie McCaffrey, who cast “American History X,” one of my favorite films. She was happy to meet me and said she loved my showreel, which is a compilation of clips from my work. She complimented my acting. Then she asked who represented me in the U.S., and I said no one. She said, “Oh, I’ll be your manager.” She’s been my manager ever since.
We even did a film together, an Holocaust short that we’re now making into a feature film. And yeah, that’s my origin story of how it all came along.
Yitzi: You probably have so many interesting stories from your career. You have so many great projects. Could you share with us one or two of your favorite anecdotes, favorite stories from your experiences?
Ido: OK, I’ll tell you something you would love probably. So I’ve been in LA for nine years, and it’s LA. At the beginning, I was excited because everybody offered me a feature film. Everybody told me I’m going to be in their feature film. So I didn’t leave LA for a few years because I thought, “Oh, we’re going to shoot soon, we’re going to shoot soon.” And I understood it’s part of the thing here — people just say stuff even though they’re not sure if it’s going to happen or not.
I did a few shorts and a few TV shows, nothing too major. And as I told you, I kept going to these Shabbat dinners with Chabad, which were very welcoming and became like a second family to me. But they also tried to make me a little more connected to the religion. And they kept telling me, “Are you putting on tefillin? You should put on tefillin.”
So anyway, one of these families had this cousin come. He was just a 21-year-old Chabad guy, very enthusiastic. And he was insistent about me putting on tefillin all the time. And I said, “Yeah, well, I don’t have any, but when I get back home, I’ll get them.” Then he ended up buying tefillin for me. And then I saw how much he paid for it — around $400. Just feeling guilty that he paid so much, I started putting on the tefillin and saying the prayer.
Then he told me, “Oh, when you put on the tefillin, say what you wish for — say the prayer, then wish for what you want to happen.” A week after that, I started booking all the shows. It started a week after putting on tefillin. I booked after nine years in LA of nothing happening, emptying all my money.
So then I booked a film, flew to Glasgow to shoot it called “Tehran.” The day before I finished, we wrapped that film. I booked a TV show that was shot in Budapest and Palma de Mallorca for CBS. So from Glasgow, they flew me to Budapest and Palma de Mallorca to shoot the CBS show “FBI International.” And two weeks after that, I booked a Hulu show, and I kept putting on tefillin. I feel it adds a lot.
Yitzi: It’s been said that sometimes our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Do you have a story about a humorous mistake that you made when you were first starting and the lesson that you learned from it?
Ido: I can tell you a story. I don’t know if it has a good lesson, but I’ll tell it anyway. So when I first came to LA and was new here, I hardly had any money, so I took the bus everywhere. The buses in LA are a bit rough, to say the least. But there was this one coffee shop in West Hollywood that I really loved to go to because there aren’t a lot of places in LA where you can sit outside at a coffee shop and enjoy it. So I went there all the time by bus.
Then when I finally got some money to get a car, I was so excited to drive there for the first time without taking the bus. I drove there and looked for parking. It’s LA, so there were like seven signs — you can park from seven to three but not from eight to two and all this stuff. I tried for a few minutes to understand if I could park there or not. Then I said, “Okay, I finally made this drive. I’m just going to risk it, park, drink my coffee really fast, and drive away.”
So I parked my car, hoping for the best, went in, drank the coffee really fast. Then after like 15 minutes, I started walking back to my car, squinting to see if I had a ticket or not. While squinting, I see this huge muscular, tattooed guy who looked rough and dangerous doing something inside my car.
My head went, “Okay, I have two options — either call the police, but back then my accent was bad so they might not understand me and he’ll run away with my car before they get there. And all my money just went into this car — I have nothing left. Or I channel the martial arts I did in Israel for 10 years.” I said, “Okay, it’s go big or go home.”
So from walking normally, I started strutting toward the car like you see small animals do when a predator comes on nature shows. As I got closer, he looked even bigger. Then he looks at me, the adrenaline rushed my body, and I felt it was either go really hard now or he might kill me or beat me up.
So in the adrenaline, I kicked the car and yelled, “Get the F out of my car!” He yelled back, and we started yelling at each other. I was scared to death but knew if I stopped yelling, he’d take advantage. So I acted tougher, yelling more as a crowd formed, thinking at least with a crowd, he won’t kill me.
I got up to the window yelling, “I give you 10 seconds before I kick you out of my car! 10, 9…” counting down, looking between him and the car’s black interior, thinking, “Wait, my interior is white — this isn’t my car! This is where I parked, but it’s someone else’s car.”
So I started mumbling, my thoughts and words not lining up. He’s like “What did you say?” I’m realizing I’m just yelling gibberish because I don’t want to stop the tough act but I’m confused since the interior looks different but it’s the spot I parked in.
I started walking backwards, still yelling gibberish, people wondering what I’m saying, as I spotted my actual car on the parallel street. I didn’t even go back to that coffee shop for like half a year after that.
The lesson is, be very careful before you act crazy, and make sure you know what you’re doing!
Yitzi: I love hearing stories about how sometimes somebody opens a door or creates an opportunity where they didn’t have to, and they changed someone’s life. Do you have a story like that where somebody went out of their way to do something for you, open a door, and that had a long-term impact on your career?
Ido: Yeah, Valerie again, because she believed in me. It’s a city where people are just looking for celebrities. From my experience, it’s hardly about the craft in LA, especially for a beginner. You can be the best actor, but people won’t even look at your reel unless you were connected to something big.
And Valerie really saw something in me. She told me the story about the Holocaust short we did together, which she heard from her family’s dinner about these V2 bombs that were built by the Jewish prisoners in the Dora camp. I don’t know if you’ve heard about it.
Yitzi: My grandmother was from Romania and she was in a factory making bombs and ammunition.
Ido: Are you serious? That’s amazing. So that’s a story that I had no idea about. Then I thought about it — I’ve heard everything about the Holocaust, all the stories. And then Valerie told me about it. Then she said, “Okay, we have to make a film about it.” And it’s like, “Yeah, we have to tell the world about it.”
So yeah, we raised the money really quickly and filmed the Holocaust short in Fresno, California, which is where you should shoot a Holocaust film. But it ended up being the most amazing experience because people in Fresno are the friendliest and really loving to help. Even though we shot a Holocaust short that’s supposed to be in winter, we shot in the summer in Fresno, like in 100-degree heat, but no one complained. Everybody was so helpful.
So we did this short that got into a lot of festivals, and I was the lead in it, which tells a story about the Jewish prisoners that were forced to build the V2 bombs and intentionally sabotage the bombs so they wouldn’t explode, saving thousands and thousands of lives. People don’t know about it, even people that survived because of them. But they kept getting hung — every person that sabotaged a bomb got hung, and everybody else saw, “This is what’s going to happen to you.” But they kept sabotaging the bombs.
So we made this short, and I felt it was my best outlet as an actor, like the best scenes I had that far. Yeah, so that really opened a lot of doors for me. And now we’re hoping to make the feature version because everybody that watched the short was like, “It should be a feature!” Hopefully soon we’re going to make a feature of it. I can send you the short if you want to watch it also.
When I prepared for the short, I met with a Holocaust survivor, and he was surprised but willing to talk a lot. He told me, “Ask me all the tough questions you have.” So I asked him, “What kept you going? Because I imagined myself in this situation, seeing my family get killed in front of me, being forced to do stuff I don’t want to do — I would just prefer to end my life.” He told me, “I didn’t have time to dwell and think about everything going on. I just felt like I was thinking about surviving and what I’m going to eat. That’s all I thought about.”
Okay, that makes sense. Like you don’t have time to think about how horrible everything is going on. You just want to keep going, keep going.
Yitzi: Ido, you have so much impressive work. Please tell us about this latest project you’re working on, this latest premiere. Tell us why we should watch it. Tell us why our readers should watch “We Were the Lucky Ones.”
Ido: I feel “We Were the Lucky Ones” is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever worked on. When I only got the audition, the scene was like poetry — so beautifully written, with such amazing dialogue. And the story itself, it’s a true story about this family in Poland that was forced because of the war to get separated, and they never gave up. They went through the harshest, most difficult things that people cannot even imagine. And they still found each other.
My character, I feel like his scenes were the most beautiful thing, and his arc was beautiful. Without giving too many spoilers, he starts as an Orthodox Jewish person in Poland. Then he’s losing family members, so he starts questioning his faith, even if there’s a God with all this darkness. Later the ghetto became part of his town. So he chooses to be part of the Jewish police in hopes he can help the Jews. But then the Jews end up hating him for it.
Whenever I got a new scene for this project, I thought “Oh my God, I felt so blessed to act in this show and get this character with these beautiful, very hard but very beautiful scenes.” We shot in Romania, and they built a whole city as a set — a whole Polish city from the 1930s, which looked so real. I had scenes with just one other character, but we had like a hundred Romanian extras around us that looked like they were really part of it. The whole thing felt so real, and the filmmakers and fellow actors were so talented.
I feel this show is going to be incredible. Yeah, I really recommend people watch it. It’s just magic.
Yitzi: What would you say are the overarching lessons, the motifs and themes from the series? What are the lessons we could take out of it?
Ido: Like I said, in this one they have a few lines saying “Always keep going while you still can, never stop, never give up. As long as you’re still alive, keep going.” Everything can seem hard, we know that nowadays too, but always keep going.
Yitzi: How do you compare and contrast your personal character, Ido, with the character of Isaac? How are you similar and how are you different?
Ido: I think we’re very similar. When I got the scenes, I felt like “Oh, they’re really writing it for me.” It’s not even acting so much. Most of my scenes are with Hadass, who is also a really good friend of mine in real life, so it was like acting as friends playing the characters.
Actually, when they cast me, Hadas was cast before me. For my final audition, Hadass already had the part. I thought before “Oh, I’m just going to tell them I know Hadas to try and get the part.” But then I felt the audition was so good, I was in the scene, in the situation, I gave my all. I thought, “If I tell them after this good performance that I know Hadas, it might ruin the audition.” So I let it be.
Then they ended up casting me not knowing I knew Hadas. A day before I came to set, they told Hadas “The guy playing Isaac is coming tomorrow. We want you to meet him because you have a lot of scenes together.” And she goes “Oh, I know him, he’s a really good friend.” They were so surprised and shocked we knew each other. They didn’t connect it because I was from LA and she was from Israel.
Yeah, I feel the character is very similar to me. I don’t know how different we are. Like, I don’t know if I personally would have joined the Jewish police — I can’t judge anybody that did, but I can’t imagine myself being part of it. But again, you can’t judge people at that time for what they did to survive.
Yitzi: Some people have said “enough with the Holocaust.” How do you answer that? Why is it important for us to keep going back to the Holocaust?
Ido: First of all, it’s part of world history, not just the Jewish people’s history. It wasn’t just the Jewish people who suffered in the Holocaust. And I feel it’s a big lesson for people who choose to stand on the side and not do anything when they hear someone saying bad things about Jewish people, Muslims, Christians — a lot of people choose to stay quiet, thinking “Oh, it will just go away.”
A lot of Jews also preferred “Okay, I won’t speak up, I won’t say anything and everything will be okay.” But no, it can get this hard, this dark — evil can really succeed if people don’t do anything against it. So I feel it’s a very important lesson to learn from the Holocaust.
But also cinematically, why not? They’re the most beautiful stories at the end of the day. That’s why they keep making movies about it. Whenever I hear a story from the Holocaust, I think “This should be a movie” because they’re stories about survival, about what people went through in the darkest time in the world.
It’s very easy to make movies about dragons and stuff. But when people really went through something that hard and then survived to tell the stories, those are the most beautiful films anyone can watch.
Yitzi: So this is our signature question. You’ve been blessed with a lot of success now. Looking back to when you first started acting and learned a lot from your experiences, are there things you wish somebody told you when you first started? Do you have five things you wish somebody told you when you first started acting?
Ido: First of all, there are no rules. One person’s success doesn’t guarantee yours. If one actor got success this way, it doesn’t mean you’ll get success the same way. Each person has their own path of success or not, and nothing is guaranteed.
Also, never give up if you really want it. Don’t give up because it’s going to be very hard. This profession is very hard. And unfortunately, most of the time it has nothing to do with the craft. You can be the most talented actor and never book any jobs. And then you see people who are just pretty get put in a lead role. I saw that in front of my face — a lot of people get cast just based on looks. I see all these people who studied acting for years and nothing happened with them. But no, this is their path. Just stick to your own path.
Another advice that helped me, and I hate this advice, but it works — be smart, don’t be right. A lot of people in this business, and even in life, it’s very easy to get angry and argue. But before you do that, be smart about it — what benefit will come from arguing with this person? Will something good come out of it or just find a smarter way to get out of it? That’s advice I hate to use, but it works, unfortunately.
And be humble. Remember the people who were with you when you didn’t have success, and see the people that suddenly become available to you now that you got success. I unfortunately see it now very well — a lot of people that were too busy to meet me for coffee or stuff suddenly become very interested after seeing the Hollywood Reporter article and stuff, you know?
So the last advice, which is connected to what I just said, but it was something someone told me that I wish I would have used more — don’t hold grudges. It’s very important. I need to work on that with myself too. But it’s very important and don’t judge people because you don’t know.
A lot of people also, I’m explaining to myself, especially in this business, are getting offers all the time from so many people. Of course people prefer to meet a successful person compared to someone who’s a “wannabe.” But remember those people who met you even before you had success, because those are the people you want to keep around.
Yitzi: Because of the platform that you’ve built and your great work, you’re a person of enormous influence and people take your words very seriously. If you could spread an idea or inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?
Ido: Of course I want everybody to have more patience with each other and listen more. I don’t know how to put it in words, but yeah, be more welcoming of everybody, you know? See everybody.
And also, yeah, love the people who are less fortunate than you and help them, raise them up instead of trying to climb with the people that are already up. Be the one who’s helping the other people. People have their own problems that have nothing to do with you. It’s very easy to be at home and overthink stuff and think, “Oh, everybody’s against me” or “This person is against me.” No, they have their own stuff. Just be with yourself and be patient and be kind with everybody.
Yitzi: So how can the readers continue to follow your work? How can they support your work in any way? How could they promote you, support you, and how can they watch “We Were the Lucky Ones”?
Ido: “We Were the Lucky Ones” comes out on March 28th on Hulu. It starts by dropping the first three episodes, then every week, another episode. So that’s going to be on Hulu.
You can follow me on social media — Instagram is @Ido_Samuel, and Facebook is IdoSamuel, the one with the blue check mark.
And I think the short “Dirty Bomb” is online for the public to watch.
Yitzi: Thank you for this amazing interview.
Ido: Thank you.
Ido Samuel Of ‘We Were The Lucky Ones’ On The Five Things You Need To Shine In The Entertainment… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.