Cousin of actor/mime Robert Shields.
Despite preferring women, Eva Le Gallienne entered into an on-and-off long-term romance with Joseph for many years following their joint appearances in the play "Liliom" in 1921.
First non-American born actor to win an Oscar as "Best Actor in a Supporting Role" (The Life of Emile Zola (1937)).
In an in-depth article by Ken Dennis from the Fall 2008 issue of "Classic Images", it is said that Rudolph Schildkraut strongly disapproved of his son Joseph Schildkraut's interest in the theatre and insisted he follow a career in music. Joseph was determined, however, and his father eventually relented.
Played a victim of the Holocaust three times, in the original stage and film versions of "The Diary of Anne Frank," as Otto Frank, and in the Twilight Zone episode "Deaths-Head Revisited" as Becker. Although by then a US citizen, living and working in America during the time of the Holocaust, as a Jew, he lost many relatives to the Nazi terrors, something of which he didn't learn the full extent until after World War II.
Schildkraut did not plan to attend the Oscar ceremony at first because his agent mistakenly informed him that he was not a favorite and going to lose. In bed, he was aroused by an informant who received some information that he was going to win. Joseph arrived at the Warner Bros. table just in time to pick up his Oscar from director Frank Capra. The Emile Zola film also won "Best Picture" and "Best Screenplay".
Schildkraut's second wife (of 29 years) died during the 3-day filming of the third-season finale of "Twilight Zone" (1959), "The Trade-Ins" in 1962. Coming from a theatrical family, he insisted on finishing the production before he'd begin mourning. In the episode, he plays an elderly man who must choose between a new body for himself or living the rest of his life with his wife in a pain-wracked body; Schildkraut's personal torments add even more poignancy to one of the Twilight Zone's best episodes.
Second cousin of the late Blanche Schildkraut Klein, maternal grandmother of Vicki Roberts.
Son of actor Rudolph Schildkraut.