Movie star Stephen Dorff is taking a crash course in Hebrew for a new film he is shooting in Israel.
The Backbeat star, whose father is Jewish, is set to spend much of the spring in the Middle East filming Zaytoun and he's beginning to wish he had paid more attention to his studies when he was younger.
He tells BlogTalkRadio.com, "I went to Israel for the first time two weeks ago for some rehearsals and I will be there for a couple of months. I have some cousins there because my dad is Jewish, so it should be an interesting part.
"For this movie I do have (to speak) some Hebrew, so I wish I had learned when I was younger. I have a good dialect guy over there, so I will do more of an Israeli sound like the actors did in the movie Munich.
"I play an Israeli pilot in the air force in 1982 - before the war in Beirut - and it's a drama about this pilot and this 12 year-old Palestinian boy; two unlikely people who become very close friends through this journey they have to make from Beirut back to Israel... I actually get into a problem with my plane and have to parachute (out) and that's how I land in Beirut, which is not the best place for an Israeli pilot to land in 1982."