Tomer Sisley | |
|---|---|
 Tomer Sisley at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival | |
| Born | Tomer Gazit 14 August 1974 |
| Citizenship |
|
| Occupation(s) | Actor, comedian |
| Years active | 1996–present |
| Children | 3 |
Tomer Sisley (born Tomer Gazit; Hebrew: תומר סיסלי; born 14 August 1974) is an Israeli[1] and French actor and comedian.
Born in West Berlin, West Germany, to Israeli-born parents who had relocated for his father's job as a research scientist in dermatology.[1][2] His mother is also a dermatologist.[3] His parents met as schoolmates in Ramat Gan, Israel, and were childhood sweethearts.[2][4] His father's family has roots in Lithuania and today's Belarus, while his mother is of Yemenite descent.[5][2]
His parents separated when he was five years old. At 9 years of age, he left Berlin to live with his father in southern France, where his father was offered a position.[4][2] He is fluent in German, Hebrew, French, and English. He attended an English-speaking school, and then attended the bi-lingual Centre international de Valbonne in Sophia Antipolis near Nice, France.[1][3]
Sisley resides in Paris with his family, and has taught Hebrew to his three children.[1][2] He spends about a month a year in Israel where most of his relatives reside, and has cousins and uncles who were in the Israeli Special Forces.[2] He is a horse rider, practiced 5 years of Krav Maga, and trains in jiujitsu and boxing.[6][7] He is also a helicopter pilot, and also races boats, does skydiving, paragliding, and extreme skiing.[8][9]
Sisley performed six years of stand-up comedy.[8][3] In 2003 he was the first French stand-up comedian to win the Just for Laughs comedy festival in Canada, the largest comedy festival in the world.[8][3]
In 2019, it was brought to light that Tomer was using material taken from American comedians. He admitted "having copied between '20-30 per cent' of his gags."[10]
Among his first films were the Tunisian fictional film Bedwin Hacker (2003), the comedy drama Virgil (2005), the French romantic comedy-drama Toi et moi (2006), the French crime film Truands (2007), and the French action thriller Largo Winch (2008). In 2009, Sisley won the Most Promising Newcomer title at the Étoiles d'or French awards for his acting in Largo Winch.[8]
In 2011, Sisley accepted the leading part in a low-budget French thriller film Sleepless Night.[11] The movie was bought by Tribeca Productions, Robert De Niro's distribution company, and Warner Brothers bought the rights for a remake.[12] The film showed at the Tribeca Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, and Rome Film Festival.[13]
In the French action thriller Largo Winch II (2011), Sisley performed a fight while skydiving from a plane without a parachute.[citation needed] He does all of his own stunts.[1][7] Among his next films were the American comedy We're the Millers (2013), the French costume drama and adventure film Angélique (2013), and the Israeli-French docudrama political thriller Rabin, the Last Day (2015).
In the American thriller web television series Messiah (2020) Sisley plays Israeli Shin Bet intelligence officer Aviram Dahan.[14][1][15]
