Israeli film icon Assi Dayan dead at 68
AFP
JERUSALEM- Prominent Israeli film director, screenwriter and actor Assi Dayan, son of the legendary general Moshe Dayan, died at his Tel Aviv home Thursday aged 68, friends and family said.
"I still can't believe it, my baby is gone," Ynet news site quoted his mother Ruth as saying as she arrived at the building.
Born Assaf Dayan in the northern village of Nahalal in 1945, he was self-taught in the cinema, starting his career as an actor in 1967 than going on to direct 17 of Israel's most succesful films.
He won a record eight Ophir Prizes, Israel's equivalent of the Oscars.
He also worked with Hollywood directors, with John Huston in "A Walk with Love and Death" and Jules Dassin in "Promise at Dawn."
He portrayed his father, a hero of the 1967 Six-Day War, armed forces chief and defence minister in an Israeli television film about the 1973 Yom Kippur war.
In 1976, he directed what became a cult comedy, "Halfon Hill Doesn't Answer," a satirical swipe at the Israeli military, regularly rerun on local television.
The Jerusalem Post described 1992's black-and-white "Life According to Agfa" as his greatest directorial triumph.
"Today we lost one of the most creative people we had here, not just in the cinema but in our culture," actress Gila Almagor, who starred in it, told Ynet.
Dayan's sister, Yael Dayan, is a politician and author who wrote a book about her troubled relationship with their father. His brother Ehud (Udi) Dayan, is a sculptor and writer.
Assi Dayan had a troubled personality.
"Dayan, who had four children from three marriages, had a tumultuous personal life," Ynet said. "He was open about his bouts of drug and alcohol abuse and suicidal tendencies."
He is to be buried at Nahalal on Sunday.
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He won a record eight Ophir Prizes, Israel's equivalent of the Oscars.
He also worked with Hollywood directors, with John Huston in "A Walk with Love and Death" and Jules Dassin in "Promise at Dawn."
He portrayed his father, a hero of the 1967 Six-Day War, armed forces chief and defence minister in an Israeli television film about the 1973 Yom Kippur war.
In 1976, he directed what became a cult comedy, "Halfon Hill Doesn't Answer," a satirical swipe at the Israeli military, regularly rerun on local television.
The Jerusalem Post described 1992's black-and-white "Life According to Agfa" as his greatest directorial triumph.
"Today we lost one of the most creative people we had here, not just in the cinema but in our culture," actress Gila Almagor, who starred in it, told Ynet.
Dayan's sister, Yael Dayan, is a politician and author who wrote a book about her troubled relationship with their father. His brother Ehud (Udi) Dayan, is a sculptor and writer.
Assi Dayan had a troubled personality.
"Dayan, who had four children from three marriages, had a tumultuous personal life," Ynet said. "He was open about his bouts of drug and alcohol abuse and suicidal tendencies."
He is to be buried at Nahalal on Sunday.
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