Nehemiah Persoff Dead at Rehab Facility: ‘Yentl’ Actor’s Cause of Death Disclosed

Nehemiah Persoff, "Yentl" and "Twins" actor, has died. He was 102.

Persoff's daughter confirmed his death to Variety, saying that the actor died on Tuesday in San Luis Obispo, California. His son, Dan, also shared the news with The Hollywood Reporter.

Meanwhile, a family friend dropped more details about his passing to Deadline and confirmed that the actor was at a rehabilitation facility at the time of his death.

In the years leading to his death, the actor suffered a stroke and other health issues that also caused him to retire from acting. It remains unknown whether one of those issues caused his death.

Persoff's family is yet to release information about his funeral, but his fans already took their time to shower him with tributes online.

One said, "Nehemiah Persoff has passed away at age 102. He was the last surviving actor in so many TV shows and films I grew up watching and still do so to this very day. Married for 69 years, his wife Thia died last year. He even had his own Twitter in 2015 at @persoff122. RIP to a mensch."

Nehemiah Persoff was memorable in a bunch of movies and TV shows. Somehow, when I think of him, it's in The Power first--as a scientist helping George Hamilton discover the identity of an evil, super-intelligent human. https://t.co/yB9REZgLWk
— Classic Film TV Cafe (@classic_film) April 6, 2022

Nehemiah Persoff's Life and Works Revisited

Persoff tied his luck for the first time when he moved to the US with his family in 1929. At that time, he started showing off his acting skills before working in theaters during the summer.

From there, he landed several roles in the film and TV industry.

While working on Broadway for one decade from 1949 to 1959, he appeared in 11 shows including "Peter Pan," "Peer Gynt," and "Galileo." Persoff got his first film credit in "The Naked City" in 1948 and his second in 1954 for his small role in "On the Waterfront."

Throughout his five decades of career, he showed how flexible he was as an actor that he appeared in films of different genres, including Humphrey Bogart's final film, "The Harder They Fall," "The Greatest Story Ever Told," "Psychic Killer," "Yentl," "The Last Temptation of Christ," "Twins," and "4 Faces."

He also collected TV titles under his belt, like "The Twilight Zone," "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," "Hawaii Five-0," "Star Trek: The Next Generation," "Chicago Hope," and "Mission Impossible."

"Back then, it seemed as if Nehemiah Persoff guest-starred on every other episode of Mission: Impossible, his indefinable all-purpose Russian/East European heavy-on-the-gutturals accent deployed to bark out orders to expressionless, obedient underlings of totalitarian regimes that the MI unit was determined to undermine by futzing around with their electrical wiring and setting Barbara Bain's hips into disruptive motion," James Wolcott wrote.