March / april 2006:

Almost Famous
Roger Marks may look like a Chasidic rabbi, but in reality he's just another struggling actor.

Profile by Benyamin Cohen | Photo by Jay Morel


Roger Marks may not be a household name, but if you're flipping television channels late at night he’s certainly hard to miss. You may catch the Lubavitcher --- beard, black hat, and in full on Chasidic garb --- in ads for T-Mobile, Verizon, and Burger King or on episodes of Charmed, Malcolm in the Middle, King of Queens, and The Shield. Most recently, he appeared on the 100th episode of The Bernie Mac Show entitled “Bar Mitzvah Crashers.”

The 50-year-old Marks is making a career out of portraying Chasidic rabbis. To casting agents, he’s quite literally a God-send. He’s the go-to-guy whenever film or television needs a rabbi with a big fat beard.

Don’t be fooled. That big fat beard on his face is real and so is his love for his religion. But it wasn’t always that way. After growing up in Illinois with barely any trace of his Judaism, Marks’ religious life was, well, dead on arrival. After leaving the family business, he moved out to Hollywood to pursue his dreams.

Watch the infamous Super Freak commercial.

Unfortunately, not much happened. A voiceover gig here, some commercials there, and even appearing as an extra in that, um, classic 1983 Dan Akroyd romp Doctor Detroit didn’t do much to encourage the struggling actor. Starving and out of work, Marks took odd jobs to help make ends meet. He was working the nightshift in a silver refinery and, with nothing much to do, read the newspaper. It was there that he saw an ad for an anti-missionary program.

“Since I had very little contact with real Judaism, I didn’t understand why anyone had to be an anti-missionary. What’s wrong with missionaries?” he recalls asking himself. “So I called the phone number and there was a very Brooklyn sounding Jewish voice on the phone that said Jews for Jesus was like kosher pork. They couldn’t be one in the same. To make a long story short, never turning down a free meal, they invited me for a Friday night dinner. Then eventually I was introduced to Yiddishkeit and I started learning Torah.”

Before long, Marks was on his way to becoming an Orthodox Jew. He soon got married and now has six children.

Ironically, it wasn’t until Marks joined the Lubavitch sect and adopted a more religious look that his acting career perked up. “When I became observant, I actually thought I’d have to drop out of acting,” he says. “I didn’t know there would be a niche for actors with beards because, at that time, if you didn’t look, what they called, ‘Proctor & Gamble’ you had a tough time getting any type of work. They didn’t want ethnic types.”

But his wife saw him pining away at his dream and pushed him to get an agent. Marks found one he liked, told him he couldn’t work on Shabbat, and hoped for the calls to start coming in. And they did. Marks, an insurance agent by day, goes on a couple auditions a week.

Surprisingly, Marks is not alone. There’s a small cottage industry of religious rebels who all show up for cattle calls in swank L.A. production offices. At open auditions, he’s not the only rabbi look-alike on hand. But since Marks is the real McCoy, he often gets chosen for roles over non-Jews with glued-on beards.

“I did a Snickers commercial and it was like dueling rabbis. They had a fellow who didn’t understand Yiddish who was pretending to speak Yiddish to me and everyone else in the room,” Marks recalls. “He just started copying everything I would do. It was very funny. But he had no compunction whatsoever. He was a Jew who my wife knew from her transcendental meditation days who had been in Iowa with the Maharishi. And he was an actor. So when an audition came for being an Orthodox Jew, he had a dark black coat and he glued a beard on and I would see him. And he would do these weird things in Yiddish. It used to piss me off. That one time, I took pleasure in blowing him off the stage, but he was just being a jerk.”

Granted, that Snickers commercial got Marks some unwanted attention. From that ad, his picture appeared in the prestigious Advertising Age magazine alongside an article about commercials that are done in bad taste. Marks looks back at the commercial with a laugh: “We’re all in the locker room with the L.A. Raiders and they’re kneeling down for the team benediction and the priest goes up and gives the benediction and the coach says, ‘Due to the new political correctness rules,’ and he points to me so I give a benediction. Then the camera pans and you see 14 other religions waiting to give their benedictions and that ran for like a year. It was a very funny commercial.”

Marks has no problem propagating a stereotype of what an Orthodox Jew looks like. “Hollywood’s a business,” he admits. “You’re dealing with a stereotype that is easily recognizable so they’re not moralizing or extemporizing or making a statement of any kind. They’re trying to make money. The stereotype already exists. They’re going to cast someone else if they don’t cast me. I don’t feel bad about it in that sense.”

However, there are a few things Marks auditioned for that he turned down because he thought it was inappropriate — like a commercial where he had to appear half naked in a hot tub with a German bodybuilder and a gorgeous blonde model.

But he’s finding other jobs to keep him busy. Fans may remember him from a recent digital music commercial featuring a variety of people dancing with their iPods. He was a rabbi grooving to the 1981 funk soul classic, Super Freak. He did a day’s work on an Edward Norton film, Down in the Valley, which played at the Cannes and Sundance film festivals. He snagged a role in this month’s Larry the Cable Guy movie and recently shot a National Car Rental commercial. He can currently be seen in an eBay commercial in heavy rotation.

And he keeps on auditioning. Our interview with the affable Chasid was postponed twice because he was auditioning for a Coca-Cola commercial where a little girl mistakes him for Santa Claus.

Meanwhile, his newfound fame is making him pretty popular amongst his fellow Chasids. “I get a lot of ribbing at synagogue on Shabbat,” he says. And his kids are enjoying the price of fame as well. Located amidst their toys and computer games is a brand new copy of Rick James’ Super Freak CD.

When asked why he didn’t just download the song for 99 cents from BuyMusic.com (the company he was promoting), Marks has a quick response. “My three-year-old boy has destroyed the last three CD players I have bought. I was a little afraid to buy an MP3 player.”

Ah, the pains of fatherhood and stardom. For Marks, it’s music to his ears.



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