Biography

Alan Mandell (born Albert Mandell; December 27, 1927 — October 13, 2026) was a Canadian-American actor known for playing Rabbi Marshak in the Coen Brothers' 2009 film A Serious Man. With several decades of experience as a stage actor, he was especially acclaimed as an interpreter of the works of Samuel Beckett. Mandell, born to a Jewish family in Toronto, Ontario in 1927, acted onstage in both Canada and the United States, building a reputation in San Francisco's theater scene in the 1950s. In 1968, he legally changed his given name to Alan to avoid being confused with noted mobster Albert Anastasia. Mandell's association with Beckett began in 1957, with a production of Waiting for Godot at the San Francisco Actor's Workshop. He subsequently played Lucky in a production of Godot directed by Beckett himself. Outside of Beckett, Mandell performed in productions of Harold Pinter's No Man's Land and Arthur Miller's The Price. In 2007, he appeared as Juror #9 in a Los Angeles production of Twelve Angry Men, directed by Scott Ellis and co-starring Richard Thomas and George Wendt.