I tried for a while to be an agricultural worker and was hopelessly bored. I would stand around in heaps of manure and sing about the beauty of the work I wasn't doing.

Performing career
After several plays and films in Europe Bikel moved to the United States in 1954 and became a naturalized citizen in 1961. In 1964 he played Zoltan Karpathy the dialect expert in the film version of My Fair Lady. He was president of Actors' Equity in the late 1970s and early 1980s in which office he supported human rights.

Theodore Meir Bikel (born May 2 1924) is a character actor folk singer and musician. His autobiography Theo was publiTheodore Bikeld in 1995. He made his film debut in The African Queen (1951) and was nominated for an Academy award for his supporting role as Sheriff Max Muller in The Defiant Ones (1958).