American actor Elliott Gould focuses the camera on real life

(JNS) - It's difficult to imagine a face like Elliott Gould's becoming a matinee idol today. It is angular and brooding, with eyes that have carried a weight beyond their years and a voice that teetered between irony and sincerity.

"Acting, for me, was always about truth," he said in a recent conversation from his home in California. "And the truth is, I never fit in. That's why I worked."

Gould, 86, doesn't so much act as inhabit a mood. He was never Hollywood's golden boy - but that, in part, is what makes him unforgettable. Being Jewish has always been inseparable from his sense of self. "I...