I recently interviewed actor and talk show host Jerry O’Connell via Zoom. He spoke to me from Mort’s, a deli in the San Fernando Valley – the perfect setting for a conversation about the Jewish people.
O’Connell’s career took off early, with his breakout role as Vern in the classic film Stand by Me. There’s been a kind of elasticity to his career – an ability to adapt, to stay relevant, to keep showing up in new ways.
Over the decades, he’s moved easily between film and television, drama and comedy, with memorable roles in Jerry Maguire, Scream 2, and the family film Kangaroo Jack before reinventing himself as a television host and personality on The Talk for CBS.
I knew Jerry had a reputation as a consummate professional and a great guy. My husband, Jeff Melman, directed him and his co-star, Jim Belushi, in an episode of The Defenders, a series about two attorneys in “anything goes” Las Vegas. It was a terrific concept for two comedic talents that never made it to a second season, but that’s show business.
I didn’t know that he was willing to be a vocal ally for Israel and the worldwide Jewish community at a time when so many have fallen silent. A video clip from a recent Anti-Defamation League (ADL) event, where he said “Jewish people have been showing up for me and my family for my entire life, and [it’s] time for me to show up for my Jewish friends,” taught me otherwise.
His connection to Israel comes from his very good high school friend, Tommy Gutman, and his Israeli mother.
She was so kind to us and just so funny. I loved her'
Apparently, Tommy’s mom had a full refrigerator and an easy nature. She would combine English words with Hebrew syntax, like “close the light” instead of “turn off the light,” which the teenagers found hysterical. “My God, she was so kind to us and just so funny. I loved her.”
Mostly, however, it is three wise men who are the key Jewish influences in his life. There is the late director Rob Reiner, who gave him his big break by casting him in Stand by Me and encouraging him to be himself; his longtime manager, Michael Rotenberg, who has guided his career; and his godfather, “Uncle Bill” Silverstein, a World War II veteran.
Uncle Bill’s stories about being a former POW made a huge impact on him, Jerry explains.
“[Bill] served in the [US] Air Force and got shot down. He would tell my younger brother and me stories about being a prisoner of war in Germany. The most frightening part for him was being discovered as a Jew.
“I couldn’t believe he had to live with that kind of terror. As a child, I promised myself, ‘if I ever see antisemitism like that again, I’m gonna do something about it. I’m gonna enlist; I’m gonna fight.’”
I was nine years old when I learned about the Holocaust, and it was as if my DNA changed. For years, like Jerry, I would have fantasies about how I would have rescued others had I been alive at that time.
A screening at the Simon Wiesenthal Center of the Israeli documentary October 7: Bearing Witness to the Massacre, an IDF compilation of raw footage from the attack, reminded him of his childhood promise.
“My mentor in Hollywood [manager] Michael Rotenberg, whose parents are Holocaust survivors, asked me to go with him. I said no; I didn’t want to see it. I couldn’t handle it. But he didn’t want to go alone, so I went [with] him.
“And after seeing that film, I thought I am witnessing a Holocaust; antisemitism on a global level again.
“And I have to tell you... It brought everything back. That childhood feeling. That anger. That promise: if something like this ever happens again, I’m going to do something.”
For O'Connell, doing something means showing up however he can. “Doing interviews, speaking, and signing letters. I know people in Hollywood have different opinions, but I don’t want to be combative. I just show up for my Jewish friends. If I didn’t, I’d feel ashamed when I saw them.”
He gets hundreds of messages of gratitude on social media, but also biting personal attacks, which he ignores. “No one says it to my face. I ignore it. I don’t think being combative helps. I focus on what I can control: my actions.”
I support his decision not to engage with the vitriol. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect members of the entertainment industry to be experts on all things Israel and do battle.
Social media is a cesspool of slander against the Jewish homeland. Like the Whack-a-Mole game at an arcade, when you bat down one lie, another one pops up. The mitzvah, especially for people whose jobs depend on being liked, is standing strong in your convictions.
I ask what drew him to acting in the first place.
He describes himself as the kind of child who was always in trouble for speaking out of turn, blurting things out, and playing the class clown.
“I got on a movie set, Stand by Me, when I was 11,” he says, “and I came to quickly realize that that behavior was not only allowed, it was encouraged.”
So, an acting career wasn’t a grand plan or a carefully nurtured path by a stage mother. It was a light-bulb moment when who he already was suddenly made sense in a new environment. “I was just good at it. I wasn’t really good at anything up until that point in my life.”
“This is actually a message to all parents,” he tells me. “If you have a child who is – well, in my day they called it hyperactive – I hope that’s not offensive – but a kid with a lot of extra energy... consider putting them in the entertainment industry.”
Jerry has an appealing, self-deprecating sense of humor and the ability to wink at the audience and include them in his mischief. Hollywood is always looking for pretty people. Pretty people who can really act are gold. Pretty, funny people who can act are platinum.
Comedy is a lot harder to play than drama. It requires timing, a sense of rhythm, and an understanding of misdirection that most people don’t have. How does he come by these traits?
“Hanging out with funny people makes you funnier,” he tells me. “I surround myself with people who make me laugh. I get coffee every morning with Howie Mandel (actor and TV host, St. Elsewhere, America’s Got Talent) and comedy writer Mark Blutman (Boy Meets World). We don’t sit there and talk about current events; we sit around and continually joke about them. The goal is not to see who can make the best point or win a debate. The goal is to make the table laugh.”
O’Connell went from the butt of the joke in Stand by Me to a hunky teen at 15 in the comedy series My Secret Identity. It’s about a teenager who gets malfunctioning superpowers. For example, he can float like a balloon but not fly, so he propels himself forward with aerosol cans.
“It was a very small, sort of lower-budget television show here in the United States,” he explains. “It was syndicated, so it was on individual stations around the country. It was not a network show. It was not a hit show.
“We’ve never been to Israel, okay? And that’s going to change at some point, but it must have been a hit in Israel, because there was a couple of years there where I could not walk down the street without an Israeli tourist or an Israeli person stopping me and saying, “You were in My Secret Identity!”
A few years later, there was another series, Sliders, on Fox, where Jerry plays the leader of fellow travelers moving between parallel worlds.
“I’m never recognized for it by anyone, unless you are Israeli. And then I get recognized for it all the time. It’s the craziest thing.”
It’s been a mystery, and he’d love to have it solved. A bit abashed, he says he hopes to get comments on this interview from Israelis to know whether it was a hit there. “I’m dying to know this.” So, if you’re an Israeli fan of either show, this is your chance to let him know.
For the last 18 years, Jerry has been married to actress and model Rebecca Romijn, who blasted into American consciousness with her Sports Illustrated “Swimsuit Issue” in 1999.
As an actress, Rebecca is probably best known for her roles as Mystique, a powerful, blue-skinned, yellow-eyed, shapely, and shape-shifting mutant in the first three X-Men films, and Commander Una Chin-Riley, Captain Pike’s Number One, in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.
They live in Calabasas, a popular enclave for members of the entertainment industry.
During our conversation, Jerry plugs his favorite valley hangouts. Mort’s Deli in Tarzana “has great food,” he tells me, and “there’s a coffee place called Calabasas Coffee House. On Fridays, they sell the best challah bread.”
What has it been like raising their beautiful twin daughters, Charlie and Dolly, in Hollywood?
“They’re good kids – I think I’ll keep them.” He confesses to being a very vocal parent on the sidelines of their high school volleyball games. “I cheer them on. No negativity, just encouragement. But the challenge,” he says, “is raising kids with privilege. We want them to still have drive and appreciate humanity.”
They are allowed on social media, where so much of the Jew-hatred lives. “You can’t shield them – they need to learn to navigate it and defend themselves.”
However, Rebecca and Jerry have made sure the girls have learned about the Holocaust. “We’re fortunate to live in Los Angeles – we have the Wiesenthal Center. I took them there when they were very young. Their school has taken them there a couple of times.”
Living in Los Angeles, the family is surrounded by the Jewish community – friends, temples, Seders – so their children are aware of the history.
Unsurprisingly, given all his Jewish friends, O’Connell has experienced many Passovers, “even one with a mariachi band doing the Four Questions,” and brings his whole family. Mariachis are a new one for me, but then again, this is Hollywood.
The inclusivity warms his heart. “My family feels completely welcomed. Sometimes even more special because we’re guests. And I love brisket. But I worry about people who aren’t exposed like we are,” he says. “That’s where ignorance comes in.”
I ask whether he has adopted any Jewish traditions or values. Getting his teenage girls to sit down for dinner as a family is almost impossible, he tells me. “I envy my Jewish friends who have everyone together every Friday night. I wish I had that structure. We don’t celebrate Shabbat formally, but we do eat challah every weekend.”
HIS DAUGHTERS are applying to college now, and there are colleges he wouldn’t feel comfortable sending them to, based on how the schools have responded since October 7. He is shocked at how some educational institutions have handled things.
I’m not. The universities began purging Jews in Germany in the 1930s, about a decade before the Nazis documented the state-sponsored genocide of the Jewish people in “The Final Solution.” Beginning in 1933, legislation mandated the dismissal of Jewish faculty and choked student enrollment, culminating in their complete exclusion from higher education by 1938.
Not many people – Jews included – outside of Israel are aware of how complicit German universities were in the Holocaust.
Holocaust education often centers on the atrocities committed within the concentration camps, but I think it should place equal emphasis on the broader conditions within German society that made those crimes possible. Examining how institutions demonized Jews and normalized exclusion and discrimination before the camps were established shines a light on the troubling parallels today.
O’Connell is understandably proud of New York University, where he majored in film and studied screenwriting from 1991 to 1994, because of the changes it made in the way it handles antisemitism on campus.
Settling a federal lawsuit, NYU updated its nondiscrimination policies to explicitly identify anti-Zionism as a form of harassment and established the Center for the Study of Antisemitism. In addition, the university implemented mandatory training for students, appointed a Title VI coordinator, and made it clear that using “Zionist” as a slur is a violation of its harassment policies.
He’s surprised at how much his outspokenness has meant to the Jewish community.
The accelerating Jew-hatred is affecting Israeli Jews the most. They have been verbally abused and literally hunted when traveling abroad, but Jews everywhere have lost their sense of safety and often feel abandoned.
Several Jewish members of the entertainment industry called for support in the weeks following October 7, 2023.
Actress and comedian Amy Schumer posted the following message on her Facebook page: “To my non-Jewish friends, call your Jewish friends. They are scared, they’re hurting, and they are terrified by your silence.”
Actress Julianna Margulies expressed all our pain when she wrote in a USA Today opinion piece, “My non-Jewish friends, your silence on antisemitism is loud. We are hurting, and we are terrified because history has shown us that this won’t end well for the Jewish people if you don’t hear our cries for help.”
“I really want to thank every person who has come up to me and said, ‘Thank you so much for that ADL speech,’” Jerry tells me. “It really means a lot to me because I didn’t realize the importance of what I was doing at that moment.
“I had a very emotional moment recently at LAX – that’s our airport here in LA,” he continues.
“I was sitting with my daughter. We were going to a volleyball tournament, and we were waiting to board our flight. A couple of teenagers, a girl and a guy, came up to me and asked to take a selfie. And listen, a lot of people recognize me. Sometimes, younger people know me from a kid’s movie I did called Kangaroo Jack. So I said, ‘Oh yeah, sure, I’ll take a selfie.’ If people ask for a photo, I take it.
“I said, okay, thanks, and I was gonna sit down with my daughter when the girl said to me, ‘Thank you for your ADL speech. It really meant a lot.’ And I found it to be very, very emotional. I can’t even tell you why.”
Before we wrap up the interview, he adds, “By the way, I have got to go to Israel. It’s crazy [that I haven’t been there].”
“They’ll welcome you like a son,” I tell him.■
The writer is an attorney and 20-year entertainment veteran, the CEO of Liberate Art, and the author of the award-winning book Artists Under Fire: The BDS War Against Celebrities, Jews, and Israel. Her column, “Hollywood Stories,” spotlights Jewish and non-Jewish entertainers who voice support for Israel and the Jewish community.
@HollywoodStoriesByLanaMelman