Winona Horowitz, perhaps better known as Ryder, was one of the most-sought after Hollywood actresses of the late 1990s.

The daughter of a Jewish author and publisher Michael Horowitz, she grew up on a commune with no electricity and was homeschooled for a period of time.

While still a teenager, she appeared in Tim Burton’s dark comedy Beetlejuice, a year later she challenged expectations of high school films with the cult favourite Heathers.

British Jewish actor Robert Kazinsky is on his way to Middle Earth.

Mr Kazinsky, better known to Eastenders fans as Sean Slater, has been named as one of the cast members for the upcoming film of The Hobbit.

Peter Jackson, who directed the Lord of the Rings trilogy, has signed up Mr Kazinsky for two films based on the classic J.R.R. Tolkien novel.

While the other films were made in New Zealand, the prequels are to be shot at a film studio in Watford.

Around 300 members of the far right organisation the English Defence League (EDL) were joined by a US Rabbi associated with the Tea Party at a demonstration “to oppose Islamic fascism”.

Speaking outside the Israeli embassy in London, Rabbi Nachum Shifren stressed he was not here to represent the Tea Party but came as someone “who loves freedom”.

Rabbi Shifren, who is standing for the California state senate, said: “To all my Jewish brothers who have called me a Nazi…I say to them they don’t have the guts to stand up here and take care of business."

This intelligent, frequently hilarious new comedy has been likened to Clueless, the clever 1995 film that set Jane Austen's Emma in a Beverly Hills high school. This is mainly because Easy A, directed by Will Gluck, is almost a California teenage update of Nathanial Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, the classic 19th-century story about a woman who becomes a pariah in her Puritan community after giving birth to a child in an adulterous affair and refusing to name the father.

Mike Leigh has cancelled a trip to Israel in protest at the controversial loyalty oath bill.

The British Jewish film director said he had been stupid and naïve to agree to teach a master class at Jerusalem’s Sam Spiegel Film and Television School and that he had no choice but to let his audience down.

He said: “I cannot come, I do not want to come, and I am not coming.”

Mr Leigh was due to visit in November and receive an honorary fellowship award from the school, as well as speak in Haifa and Tel Aviv and to Palestinian filmmakers in the West Bank.

Early on in the film, The Social Network, Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg goes to a party organised by Harvard's Jewish fraternity, Alpha Epsilon Pi. It is a Caribbean-themed bash, complete with half-hearted tropical decorations and students mingling with colourful cups of punch in their hands. One or two make a desultory effort to dance.

Tony Curtis was more than an idol, if Jews were allowed to have such things. He was that from his hair to his shiny pointed shoes. And then some.

Jews loved him because in an age when it was fashionable for actors to cover up their Jewish heritage along with their original names, Curtis did none of that. He helped Jewish causes, he gave money to communities wracked with problems when the red flags came down in Eastern Europe - particularly those in Hungary where his parents were born - but above all, everyone knew he was really Bernie Schwartz from the Bronx.

It is early afternoon in a hot and steamy Beverly Hills. Sid Caesar's sprawling hilltop house perches on top of a lush canyon that overlooks the bustle of the city. Up here the air is clear and tranquil, punctuated with the sweet-smelling fragrance of jasmine and gardenia. It has been the Caesars' home for more than 40 years.

A British Jewish film director has been honoured at the Boston Film Festival with its Visionary Filmmaker Award, presented last weekend.

Joshua Newton's film, Iron Cross, was the last film made by Jaws actor Roy Scheider - he died towards the end of filming.

Mr Newton, whose first full-length feature this is, directed, wrote and produced the thriller, in which Scheider stars as Joseph, a retired New York police officer and Holocaust survivor, who travels to Nuremberg following the death of his wife to reconcile with his son Ronnie (Scott Cohen).