ARTS AND CULTURE

Rachel Weisz

Actress

Acclaimed actress Rachel Weisz once described herself as a “Jew in disguise,” openly Jewish but never playing Jewish roles. This changed with her starring role in “Denial,” about the notorious case in which British Holocaust denier David Irving sued Jewish scholar Deborah Lipstadt for libel, effectively putting the Holocaust on trial.

Saying she was raised “culturally” Jewish, Weisz had a strong personal connection to the material, as her parents were refugees from Hitler, with her mother just barely escaping the Nazi leader’s takeover of Austria in 1939.

The film, she says, is not about the Holocaust, however, but about much larger themes: “How we’re now living in this kind of relativist, what they’re now calling post-truth, world, and everything is up for grabs.” Ultimately, she says, “It’s about the insanity of trying to put fact on trial.” (Photo credit: Screenshot.)