After loving her performance in the comedy “Kissing Jessica Stein” several years back, I have been a huge fan of Tovah Feldshuh.

This great actress, currently co-starring in the feature film “ “O Jerusalem,” rang me up during a recent visit to L.A. to talk about the movie and stepping into the role of Golda Meir again after playing the former Israeli prime minister on Broadway.

“She was much younger in the movie than she was in the play and there was almost literally no rehearsal time,” said the New York-based actress. “The preparation for the movie was quite different from the play because I had to do it in isolation and we shot in three weeks. I spend a year-and-a-half doing ‘Golda’s Balcony’ on the stage.”

Tovah, who turns 55 next month, set a record for the longest-running one-woman play in the history of Broadway and received her fourth Tony Award nomination. She has also been nominated twice for an Emmy, nearly 30 years ago for the mini-series “Holocaust” and more recently for her recurring role as defense attorney Danielle Melnick on “Law & Order.”

“O Jerusalem,” which has been playing in select theaters, re-creates the struggle surrounding the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. The film is told from the alternating viewpoints of the Jews, Arabs and Brits and at the center are two young, American friends - one Jewish, the other Arab.

“They are part of the intellectual youthful elite of New York City and it takes their loving friendship and transplants them into circumstrances of grave danger and two sides pitted against each other,” she explained. “They became face-to-face together with guns...It shows us what can happen to mankind and this need to kill each other is a horrifying thing. It’s tremendous agony and heartbreak.”

Tovah is proud to be a part of it even if two of her best scenes didn’t make the final cut. That doesn’t happen on the stage where she has also done a one-woman shows as Tallulah Bankhead and is in reheasals to play Katherine Hepburn in “Tea at Five.”

“I love to work,” she says. “I’ve been doing this for 30-odd years now. I’m an actor who wants to do all things in all seasons like anybody who strives to be a good transformational artist.”