Tomer Sisley (born Tomer Gazit; Hebrew: תומר סיסלי; born 14 August 1974) is an Israeli[1] and French actor and comedian.
Early and personal life
Born in West Berlin, West Germany, to Israeli-born parents who had relocated for his father's job as a research scientist in dermatology.[1][2] His mother is also a dermatologist.[3] His parents met as schoolmates in Ramat Gan, Israel, and were childhood sweethearts.[2][4] His father's family has roots in Lithuania and today's Belarus, while his mother is of Yemenite descent.[5][2]
His parents separated when he was five years old. At 9 years of age, he left Berlin to live with his father in southern France, where his father was offered a position.[4][2] He is fluent in German, Hebrew, French, and English. He attended an English-speaking school, and then attended the bi-lingual Centre international de Valbonne in Sophia Antipolis near Nice, France.[1][3]
Sisley resides in Paris with his family, and has taught Hebrew to his three children.[1][2] He spends about a month a year in Israel where most of his relatives reside, and has cousins and uncles who were in the Israeli Special Forces.[2] He is a horse rider, practiced 5 years of Krav Maga, and trains in jiujitsu and boxing.[6][7] He is also a helicopter pilot, and also races boats, does skydiving, paragliding, and extreme skiing.[8][9]
Career
Comedy
Sisley performed six years of stand-up comedy.[8][3] In 2003 he was the first French stand-up comedian to win the Just for Laughs comedy festival in Canada, the largest comedy festival in the world.[8][3]
Scandal
In 2019, it was brought to light that Tomer was using material taken from American comedians. He admitted "having copied between '20-30 per cent' of his gags."[10]
Among his first films were the Tunisian fictional film Bedwin Hacker (2003), the comedy drama Virgil (2005), the French romantic comedy-drama Toi et moi (2006), the French crime film Truands (2007), and the French action thriller Largo Winch (2008). In 2009, Sisley won the Most Promising Newcomer title at the Étoiles d'or French awards for his acting in Largo Winch.[8]
In the French action thriller Largo Winch II (2011), Sisley performed a fight while skydiving from a plane without a parachute.[citation needed] He does all of his own stunts.[1][7] Among his next films were the American comedy We're the Millers (2013), the French costume drama and adventure film Angélique (2013), and the Israeli-French docudrama political thriller Rabin, the Last Day (2015).
In the American thriller web television series Messiah (2020) Sisley plays Israeli Shin Bet intelligence officer Aviram Dahan.[14][1][15]
