Polish actor and director Jerzy Stuhr in 2008. Photo ITAR-TASS/Vladimir Smirnov
It cannot be said that the Russian public is well acquainted with modern Polish actors. And Jerzy Stuhr, of course, was known and loved by anyone who had seen Juliusz Machulski’s comedy Deja Vu. There he played John Pollack, a Chicago killer of Polish origin, who comes to Odessa to eliminate a scoundrel who had upset the mafia and is now hiding in the USSR under the name of Mikola Nechiporuk. Soviet reality quickly drove poor Johnny mad: a cynical killer, whose only interests in life were jazz, boxing and sex, ended his days in a psychiatric hospital.
Deja Vu was a Soviet-Polish film shot mostly in Russian. If we talk about purely Polish cinema, then Shtur was known to us primarily from the comedy “Sex Mission”, which at the Soviet box office was dubbed “New Amazons”. Its heroes, Max and Albert (Stuhr and Olgerd Lukashevich), for the sake of a scientific experiment, underwent the freezing procedure and, as a result, were defrosted in 2044, in a world where all men became extinct and women established their own harsh rules.
Overall, Stuhr had five dozen film roles to his name; he was one of the most famous actors in Poland. In 2008, he was recognized in his homeland as the best comic actor of the century.
He was born shortly after the war, on April 18, 1947 in Krakow. At school he was bullied for his German surname (and what can you do, Jerzy’s father was Austrian by nature). In high school, he became passionate about theatre, acted in amateur school productions and applied to the State Higher Theatre School, which he graduated in 1972. The year before, he made his film debut in the musical comedy A Million for Laura. A few years later, leading directors were already inviting him to their films: he starred with Andrzej Wajda in “Without Anesthesia” (and auditioned for the lead role in “The Man of Marble”), and also starred in “Scar” with Krzysztof Kieślowski, “Rest” and “The Film Lover” (the latter film marked the beginning of the world fame of the future author of “The Decalogue” and the “Three Colors” trilogy, which also did not happen without the participation of Stuhr). Films by Agnieszka Holland, Krzysztof Zanussi and the Italian Nanni Morretti were also shown. But in Poland, as here, comedies are more popular than original dramas; that is why the actor’s real national fame came after “The New Amazons”. The audience appreciated mainly the comic side of his talent (and he, by the way, also voiced Donkey in the Polish versions of “Shreks”, which won over crowds of very young fans), although he delighted the audience with dramatic roles.
In 1971, Stuhr married the violinist Barbara Koska, whom he had known since childhood, and became the father of two children: son Maciej and daughter Marianna. Over the past three and a half decades he has been plagued by health problems. In 1988 he suffered a heart attack (about which he wrote the book “Heart Disease or My Life in Art”). In September 2011 he was diagnosed with cancer of the larynx (according to other sources, of the esophagus), but the disease was controlled with chemotherapy. In 2016, he suffered another serious heart attack. Finally, in 2020, he suffered a stroke. And yet he continued to work: in 2024 the premiere of the play “Genius” took place, based on the play by Tadeusz Slobodzianek about a possible meeting between Stalin and Konstantin Stanislavsky. Stuhr himself directed it and played Konstantin Sergeevich, bidding farewell to the theatre with this role and summing up his long career.
