Jiřina Bohdalová

Jiřina Bohdalová photo

Jiřina Bohdalová has been one of the most popular Czech actresses for a long time, and she has been appearing in films, on television and in theatre over the course of seventy venerable years. Her mother, who acted in amateur theatre herself, signed her up for film and theatre castings from an early age. Jiřina started getting roles very soon and she played many children’s roles both on the screen and on stage. At the age of twenty-six, she successfully graduated from the Theatre Faculty at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague with a Josefina performance. She caught the eye of Jan Werich there, and he offered her work in the ABC Theatre. Later, she became a part of the Divadlo na Vinohradech theatre and stayed there her whole life. In the 1960s, she also became more prominent in film. They were predominantly comedy roles, the most famous of them being as a part of the Bohdalová-Janžurová-Jirásková trio in the musical comedy Men about Town (Světáci). But she played the role of her life in The Ear (Ucho), a psychological drama by Karel Kachyňa. The film was immediately banned and it basically meant the end of her film career for Jiřina Bohdalová for another twenty years. Instead of the silver screen, she found her place on television in numerous films, TV shows, and especially as a part of a comedy duo with Vladimír Dvořák in the Televarieté show. She also gave voices to many characters of children's shows.
She returned to film after the Velvet Revolution. She won the Czech Lion film awards for the main role in fairy-tale The Immortal Aunt and drama Fany. Apart from numerous other awards, she won the TýTý audience television award eight times in a row, a Thália theatre award for lifelong work, and an award for Outstanding Artistic Contribution to Czech Cinema at the Karlovy Vary IFF.