Saul Rubinek: About the Artist

Click here to listen to his interview.

Saul Rubinek was born in a refugee camp in Germany after World War II, where his father ran a Yiddish repertory theater company. He was 9 months old when he arrived with his parents as immigrants to Canada. Saul spoke Yiddish and French before he spoke English, but when he was 8 he began acting in English on stage.

In 1968-69 Saul was the youngest member of the Stratford Ontario Shakespeare Festival company when it had its first Canadian co-artistic directors, John Hirsch and Jean Gascon. He was a co-founder and actor/writer/director 1972 -83 Toronto Free Theatre (now Canadian Stage Berkeley Street Theaters).

Saul has continued to work in theater as an actor, director and writer, in Canada, the US, and in Europe, He directed and performed the Canadian premiere of Marc Neikrug’s “Through Roses”, a play for actor and eight-piece chamber ensemble. In collaboration with Canada’s Royal Conservatory of Music, Saul has performed the piece in Toronto, Ottawa, New York, and in London with the English Chamber Orchestra. Saul most recently performed at LA’s Mark Taper Forum in Ethan Coen’s new play “A Play Is A Poem”, directed by Neil Pepe.

Saul’s work in film spans 4 decades, including Joel & Ethan Coen’s “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs”, Clint Eastwood’s Oscar-winning “Unforgiven”, Tony Scott’s and Tarantino’s “True Romance”, and over 60 other feature films. His most recent film is “SHTTL”, filmed in Ukraine in 2021 entirely in Yiddish. The film premiered in both the London AFI Film Festival and the Rome Festival where it won the Audience Award for Best Feature.

His television work likewise spans 4 decades, including series regular roles in “Frasier”, and “Warehouse 13”, as well asguest-starring roles in dozens of series, most recently “Billions”, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”, “For All Mankind”, “Grey’s Anatomy”, and “Blue Bloods”. Most recently, Saul was a series regular in a new series for Amazon starring Al Pacino, “Hunters”.

Penguin Books published Saul’s non-fiction book “So Many Miracles”, an account of his parents’ survival growing up in Poland during World War II. He wrote and produced an award-winning documentary of the same tile for CBC and PBS, which chronicles his parents’ reunion with the people who saved their lives during the Holocaust.

Saul has also directed two films produced by his wife and producing partner Elinor Reid: “Jerry and Tom”, starring Joe Mantegna and Sam Rockwell (Sundance 1998); and the award-winning independent film “Cruel But Necessary”. He also directed two movies for Paramount and Showtime: “Bleacher Bums”, a film adaptation of the play about the Chicago Cubs baseball fans, and “Club Land” starring Alan Alda (Emmy nominee).

As a playwright, Saul’s first play, “Terrible Advice”, directed by Frank Oz, and starring Scott Bakula and Sharon Horgan, had its world premiere in London’s Menier Chocolate Factory Theater in the fall of 2011. The play was translated into German and premiered in Berlin in 2013. Saul’s new play “All In The Telling” – an adaptation of his book and documentary film — is an intensely personal exploration about how the telling of family history stories impacts three generations.

Saul’s new novel, based on his play, is “All in the Telling — a somewhat true story”, that will be available on Amazon in October of 2025, as well as the audiobook, read by Saul