Real life Bad Jews should be fodder for Jewish actors

My esteemed erstwhile colleague Stephen Pollard has entered the always volatile Jewface debate with an impassioned defence of the actor Tom Hardy, who plays the Jewish character Alfie Solomons in the BBC’s Peaky Blinders.

He was nearly convincing me with his argument about Hardy — “about as Jewish as bacon” — until I reached his conclusion that “here we have an explicitly and crucially Jewish role which needs to be played by a non-Jewish actor”.

And I thought — why is that? Why does this role, full of brimming and explosive violence, need to be played by a non-Jewish actor? Surely Stephen cannot be suggesting that Jews can’t play violent?

I daresay the late and much mourned Antony Sher could have given Tom Hardy a run for his money in the festering violence stakes. Or even, if we can stretch out our casting wand to the international, such heavyweight Jewish actors, back in their heyday, as Kirk Douglas or Edward G Robinson.