Raz Degan

Raz Degan is an Israeli actor who was born in Kibbutz Sde Nehemia and began his working life as a male model at 21, after three years of service in the Israeli Army, traveling widely. His first screen part was a cameo in Robert Altman's Pret-a-Porter (1994), and commercial work the same year made him popular in Italy. Based in New York by the mid-1990s, he gave up modeling to study acting and yoga while taking roles in Italian films and television, then moved to Los Angeles in 2000. In 2002 he returned to Italy, played Jesus on stage in Giorgio Albertazzi's Pilato sempre, and in 2004 he took on Darius III in Oliver Stone's Alexander. He led Ermanno Olmi's Cento chiodi in 2007, appeared in the French film Special Forces (2011) and the German Oma in Roma, and hosted the television show Mistero for two seasons.