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With the East European accent of his birth still evident in his speech, Elya Baskin has usually been cast to type in a wide variety of roles, from Russian spy to a naturalized American cop. Born in Riga, Latvia, he attended Moscow's prestigious Theatre and Variety Arts College and was subsequently accepted at the Moscow Comedy Theatre where he w...
Russian-born actor Elya Zalmonovich Baskin emigrated to the United States in 1976. He made his American film debut a year later in Gene Wilder’s “The World’s Greatest Lover” and forged his early career with minor parts in films like Butch and Sundance: The Early Years and the critically-acclaimed Being There
Tall, instantly identifiable Eastern European actor Elya Baskin fit the bill in Hollywood for ethnic character portrayals, especially characters with a Slavic background and an amiable demeanor; he also frequently exhibited a slightly zany undercurrent that became something of a trademark.
