Ben Foster — All or Nothing

When Ben Foster read the script for The Survivor, his response was almost visceral. "I was deeply touched. It hurt reading it. What resonated was the levels of gray that the story lived in. This is a complicated man and a complicated story in so many ways."

That man was Harry Haft, a Polish Jew who survived Auschwitz by using his fists. Trained to box by a Nazi officer, he was forced to engage in a series of death matches with fellow prisoners. Losers were shot.

He eventually emigrated to the U.S., where he had a brief career as a professional boxer (including one disastrous bout with Rocky Marciano), married and raised a family. But he couldn't outdistance survivor's guilt, complicated by what he'd done to survive. He lashed out at all around him, and refused to talk about his experiences, even with his wife and children.

Producer-director Barry Levinson set his sights on Foster as his first choice for the HBO Original film. He'd worked with the actor before — in 1999's Liberty Heights — and was convinced he would bring the necessary intensity to this difficult role. "Ben possesses a great chameleon-like quality, the ability to become another person," Levinson says.

Foster — whose credits also include Six Feet Under, The Messenger and Hell or High Water — jumped at the opportunity, which was not only for the lead, but also a position as executive producer. "This didn't feel so much like a job, but a responsibility to those that experienced the camp and are still with us," he says.

The Survivor was made with the assistance of the USC Shoah Foundation, which provided survivor videos (including Haft's, recorded in 2007) for the actor to watch. "I wanted their voices in my head," says Foster, who worked with Yiddish dialect coaches to master the accent particular to Haft's hometown.

He also wanted his body primed for the role. For the camp scenes, he says, "One of the producers said, 'We can digitize you. We have the technology to make you small.' Intuitively, I blurted out, 'If you want to go digital with my body, you've got the wrong actor.' You've seen the pictures [of camp prisoners]. You can't fake that. You can do digital, but it doesn't have the same texture."

Foster's own grandparents emigrated to the U.S. before the war to escape pogroms. But he thought of them the first time he screened the film and saw the ending Levinson had added. In it, the refugees gather at a wedding and sing "God Bless America," reaffirming their faith in their new home.

"When I saw it, I started crying. It's a little bittersweet and leaves you with hope. It reminded me of my Nana. Whenever she saw a picture of the Statue of Liberty, she'd say, 'That's my lady.'"

The Survivor is available for streaming on HBO Max.

This article originally appeared in emmy magazine issue #5, 2022, under the title, "No Other Way."