Efrem Zimbalist Jr. Biography

Fast Facts

• Presented an honorary FBI badge and plaque in 2009 for his work on "The F․B․I․" for which he became close friends with director J․ Edgar Hoover while collaborating for the series
• Born to a pair of performers, his father was a well-known violinist, while his mother was a Romanian-born operatic soprano
• Began his career in television while working as a page for NBC in the late 1930s before enlisting in the U․S․ Army during WWII
• Quote: "Nobody wants someone my age anymore․ I do an occasional thing now and then, generally not on film․ I'm out of it today․ I don't know the people who are running [the studios] today․ I don't even know the people who are making movies today․ I stopped going to the movies over 20 years ago․ The movies I used to be fanatic about they stopped making․ They started making another kind of movie, and it's not my kind of world․"
• Most widely recognized for his role as Lewis Erskine on "The F․B․I․", a character he would portray for almost a decade throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s
• Moved to Hollywood in 1956 after signing a contract with Warner Brothers, who caught notice of him as both an actor and producer in New York stage productions
• Forced into a Ukrainian boarding school at age 17, he and his sister would later escape to Moscow and eventually scrape together enough money to travel to Paris via train