Arts interviews

Have you ever suspected that the relatives you know who suffer from chronic illnesses like allergies, back pain, or ME, actually have a choice about whether or not they get better?

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There is something about Samantha Spiro‘s laugh that reminds you of Barbara Windsor. It is not just that Spiro played Windsor 10 years ago at the National Theatre in Cleo, Camping, Emmanuelle and Dick. It is that Windsor’s infectious machine-gun cackle comes naturally to the 40-year-old, award-winning actress.

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He was an ordinary boy from the Bronx, hailing from a family of Jewish furriers, but thanks to his talent as a photographer and film director, Jerry Schatzberg became friends with some of the biggest stars of music and cinema. In a career that has spanned five decades, Schatzberg has worked and socialised with Keith Richards, Al Pacino and Jimi Hendrix among others. He was even romantically linked with Hollywood actress Faye Dunaway in 1966 - the equivalent of dating Keira Knightley today. He later cast her in his Golden Globe-nominated movie, Puzzle of a Downfall Child.

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You are a celebrity agent and media adviser. You spend most of your waking moments in the company of the kind of models, actresses and starlets at home in the pages of Hello! magazine. You have a string of glamorous girlfriends, from society girl Tara Palmer-Tomkinson to television presenter Ulrika Jonsson. You fly first class between London and Los Angeles every month, and your clients include Oscar-winning actress Rachel Weisz and the Queen's cousin Lady Gabriella Windsor. You were best man at Sting's wedding to Trudi Styler.

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A good short story is "like a slap in the face and you reel from it", says Tania Hershman. A former science journalist, whose short stories have been published in literary journals and broadcast on Radio 4, Hershman gave up journalism to write fiction full time in 2007. It seems to have been a good decision: over a 24-hour period in August, she picked up no less than three writing awards.

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Ron Silver is an actor, director and producer best known for his role as spin-doctor and presidential campaign adviser Bruno Gianelli in the acclaimed television drama The West Wing. But he is also becoming increasingly renowned for his outspoken views in the real world - on world politics, on East-West relations, American foreign policy and the future of the state of Israel.

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In America, until recently, the opera world was dominated by Jewish singers. In the UK, though, you would be hard-pushed to name even one. So it comes as a surprise to learn that one of the most distinguished classical singers of the day happens to be a British Jew.

Simon Keenlyside is one of the only two opera singers of his generation (the other being Bryn Terfel) to have been honoured with a CBE. His first CD for Sony, Tales of Opera, won him the prestigious Echo Klassik Singer of the Year award.

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‘I thought I'd made the wrong decision", says Alexis Zegerman. The one-time waitress, estate agent and office worker is talking about a period in her life when it seemed that getting work as an actor was beyond reach.

Her mother, Adele, who left school when she was 15 and was determined that her children would get the best possible education even if she had to pay for it, had hoped that Alexis would choose something a little more secure.

"You could be a barrister. They act," her mother had said. But Zegerman was determined.

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What do we know about Sarah Silverman? She is 37, lives in Los Angeles, and has a dog called Duck. Oh, and she is regarded as the world's hottest and most controversial comedian, having carved a reputation in her native United States for taboo-busting stand-up routines - subjects covered include race, rape and abortion - delivered in the persona of a sweet-faced Jewish princess.

Occasionally, her desire to shock misfires - her use of the word "Chink" to describe Chinese Americans resulted in her having to defend her humour on national TV.

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Thomas Friedman is the most famous journalist in the world. Bar none. It is not because he has won the Pulitzer Prize three times. Nor because he has written five books, some of them big bestsellers. Friedman is so influential because he writes a foreign affairs column which appears twice a week in The New York Times and which is syndicated to 100 other newspapers worldwide. Friedman is read from Cairo to Cape Town; from LA to Shanghai.

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