Following this period, she returned to acting and, being fluent in many European languages, began to figure in prominently with a host of French, Italian, German and English productions, often as a co-star. Her start in films was interrupted when she returned to Israeli following her father's death and joined the Israeli Army. She made her first film there at age 13 in the drama Hemsöborna (1955) playing the daughter of a professor. The daughter of Reuben and Ruth Lewinbuk (or Levenbuch), who were of German-Jewish and Polish-Jewish descent, she was sent as a child to Stockholm, Sweden in the early 1950s to train in dance. She was born Daliah Levenbuch in the Moshav Shavey Zion, in the British Mandate of Palestine on October 12, 1942. In retrospect, she may have fallen short of the illustrious Hollywood pedestal, but she did create a fine, if brief, stir. In her case, she found decorative, second-tier notice via tongue-in-cheek spy spoofs, crime mysteries, erotic thrillers and rugged adventures.

Like most of the others, Daliah was to be viewed as a viable sex symbol contender. The Israeli actress first became a star in Europe before making a dent in Hollywood as part of a wave of knockout foreign star imports that flooded Hollywood during the mid 1960s - Claudia Cardinale, Julie Christie, Jeanne Moreau, Liv Ullmann, Melina Mercouri, Ursula Andress, Jacqueline Bisset, Romy Schneider, Elke Sommer, Senta Berger, Rosanna Schiaffino, Geneviève Bujold, Capucine, Shirley Eaton, Sylva Koscina, Barbara Bouchet, Susannah York, Rita Tushingham, Monica Vitti, Vanessa Redgrave and her sister Lynn Redgrave, and Catherine Deneuve and her sister Françoise Dorléac. Stylish, slender-framed, raven-haired Daliah Lavi was made for alluring, exotic types and princess roles with her mesmerizing beauty, chiseled cheek bones and long, flowing mane.

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