Lex Goudsmit
Dutch actor (1913-1999)
Alexandre Joseph "Lex" Goudsmit (Dutch: [ˈlɛks ˈxʌutsmɪt]; 15 March 1913 – 10 December 1999) was a Dutch-Belgian actor.
Goudsmit's father, a diamond worker, was Jewish and his mother Roman Catholic. He became famous in 1966 for playing Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, which role he performed some 1100 times in the Netherlands and in London. He played many characters on Dutch television, among others in the popular youth series Q en Q (1974) and Thomas en Senior (1985–88). From 1984 to 1999 he played Grandpa Lex on Sesamstraat, the Dutch version of Sesame Street. Goudsmit was one of the artists who recorded the song Shalom from Holland (written by Simon Hammelburg and Ron Klipstein) as a token of solidarity to the Israeli people, threatened by missiles from Iraq, during the first Gulf War in 1991.
When Goudsmit died as the consequences of a stroke, instead of doing an episode dealing with his death, along the lines of Mr. Hooper's death, the producers addressed the issue on the program following Sesamstraat, called Jeugdjournaal (Youth News). The program aired a compilation of his best appearances on the show and commented on his death. Goudsmit had told producers that he wanted to stay on Sesamstraat even after his death, so the latest scenes he taped were still used on the next season.
“Lex Goudsmit” enters the record as dutch actor (1913-1999). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Goudsmit, Dutch and actor can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2106724. VIAF identifies the subject as 284731032. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1913, 1999, 1966 and 1100.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lex Goudsmit” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.