Daniel Olbrychski celebrates 50 years on screen
PR dla Zagranicy
Peter Gentle
12.12.2011 15:42
One of Poland’s most popular actors Daniel Olbrychski has celebrated the 50th anniversary of his artistic debut by starring in an adaptation of ‘The Bridges of Madison County’, a best-selling novel by Robert James Waller.
Daniel Olbrychski: photo - PAP/Pawel Supernak
During a birthday party after the performance at Warsaw’s ‘Sixth Floor’ Theatre on Saturday night, attended by many VIPs including the President and Prime Minister, former boxing champion Jerzy Kulej fainted while presenting Olbrychski with his Olympic medal as a mark of recognition for his spectacular career.
A heart specialist who happened to be in the audience gave him first aid before he was rushed to hospital. Kulej suffered a heart attack and had to undergo asurgery yesterday. His condition is described as serious but stable. Seventy one year-old Kulej won two Olympic gold medals, in 1964 and 1968.
Born in 1945, Olbrychski was sixteen when he made his first public appearance, in a TV poetry programme.
He was a first-year Drama School student when Andrzej Wajda picked him for the lead in the screen adaptation of Stefan Żeromski’s novel ‘The Ashes’. He has played in 13 films by Wajda (‘The Wedding’, ‘The Promised Land’, ‘The Maids of Wilko’) and worked closely with many other prominent Polish and foreign directors, including Krzysztof Zanussi, Jerzy Hoffman, Volker Schlöndorff, Claude Lelouch and Nikita Michalkov, appearing alongside such stars as Burt Lancaster, Simone Signoret, Michel Piccoli, Isabelle Hupert, Marina Vlady, Leslie Caron, Hanna Schygula and Angelina Jolie (Philip Noyce’s ‘Salt’).
Five of his films were nominated for an Oscar in the Best Foreign Film category and one of them - Schlöndorff’s ‘The Tin Drum’ – won the Golden Palm at the Cannes Festival.
Olbrychski has also developed a fine career in the theatre and TV Drama, being one of the favourite actors of the late director Adam Hanuszkiewicz. His major roles included Hamlet, Macbeth and Othello.
In a poll for the best 20th century Polish actors run by the Polityka weekly, Olbrychski was placed seventh. His many distinctions includethe Commander’s Cross of the Order of Reborn Poland, the French Legion of Honour and the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. (mk)