My friend Jeffry Kaplow, who has died aged 81, enjoyed professional careers as a historian of the French Revolution, an interpreter and an art dealer before fulfilling a long-held ambition to act.
Jeff grew up in Brooklyn, New York, the third child of Russian-Jewish immigrants. His father died when he was three and his mother, an active trade unionist, worked in the garment industry. He was brought up by relations including his sister – some 15 years his elder – and his grandmother.
As part of an early admission programme, Jeff was only 16 when he went to the University of Wisconsin to study history. He absorbed the university’s democratic ethos of equality and justice, principles that were under attack – this was the era of Senator Joseph McCarthy – and was attracted to the Labor Youth League. He did a PhD at Princeton on the subject of the French Revolution.
He briefly held a post teaching at Columbia University, during the student strikes of 1968, but soon moved to Paris, where he taught American history at the new University Paris 8 (Vincennes).
While also working as a freelance conference interpreter, Jeff met Ulla Svahnström, a recently widowed Swedish journalist with a young son, Carl. They made their life together, buying and selling fine art prints as Proofs Ltd, and moving to London in the early 1990s.
There, Jeff trained as an actor at the City Lit. This late-blossoming fourth career led to roles in theatre, TV and film. He understudied Maximilian Schell and Warren Mitchell at the Old Vic and in the West End, and played the father of the murdered journalist Daniel Pearl in Michael Winterbottom’s 2007 film A Mighty Heart.
Jeff and Ulla moved back to Paris five years ago, but he had been looking forward to performing in a production at the Arcola theatre in Dalston, north London, this year.
A quintessentially urban intellectual, immersed in politics, books and art, Jeff had an endless fund of stories and jokes in five languages, including Yiddish and Russian, and huge affection for his friends from the many worlds in which he moved.
Ulla died last year. Jeff is survived by Carl and his grandson, Yann.
