Actor Charlton Heston, who died this week, did not boast any Jewish ancestry, but this did not put off the Hollywood studio chiefs who kept casting him in Jewish roles.

There was Ben-Hur, the Jewish chariot driver in the eponymous 1959 classic, there was his tablet-wielding Moses in the The Ten Commandments. However, what could have been Heston’s greatest Jewish role never quite came off. According to a report in the Jerusalem Post, the FBI recruited the actor as the 1993 Waco siege in Texas involving the Davidian religious sect of reached stalemate. The idea was that Heston was to have portrayed the Voice of God in negotiations with the cult leader David Koresh. The plan was never put into action, however. So was Heston the most Jewish non-Jewish actor ever? Perhaps not. His final film role was as the notorious Nazi, Dr Josef Mengele.