Iva Janžurová

19 May 1941, Žirovnice

Iva Janžurová studied acting at the Theatre Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. Her first engagement was in F. X. Šalda Theatre in Liberec. After one season, she transferred to the Vinohrady Theatre in Prague, where she played from 1964 until 1987. In 1988, she became a member of the drama ensemble of the National Theatre in Prague. In the middle of the 1970s, she and her partner founded a family touring theatre, for which they wrote comedies together. In 1998, she received the Thalia Award and Alfréd Radok Award for theatre acting.

Janžurová began appearing in films in the 1960s. She had her film debut in 1961, when Evald Schorm cast her into his student short Tourist (Turista). Her first leading role, which became one of the roles of her life, was in the psychological drama Coach to Vienna (Kočár do Vídně, 1966) by Karel Kachyňa. Janžurová excels with her sense of hyperbole, grotesque, parody and self-parody. She typically plays loquacious and energetic female characters in comedies. Her heroines are also often unconventional, capricious and most of all crazy – e.g. in the crazy comedy by Petr Schulhoff We’ll Kick Up a Fuss Tomorrow, Darling! (Zítra to roztočíme, drahoušku!, 1976) or in the science fiction comedy How About a Plate of Spinach? (Což takhle dát si špenát, 1977) by Václav Vorlíček. However, she can also convincingly portray psychologically more complex characters and she also excels in serious and dramatic roles, e.g. in the psychological film The Petroleum Lamps (Petrolejové lampy, 1971) by Juraj Herz. From the 1990s, characters of tragicomic and melancholic older women became her domain, e.g. Jindřiška in Roman Vávra’s film In the Rye (Co chytneš v žitě, 1998).

Janžurová appeared in more than 160 films, television productions and fairy tales, but is also known for many series, including Song for Rudolf III (Píseň pro Rudolfa III., 1967), Bachelors (Bakaláři, 1971), Arabela (1980), Humberto Circus (Cirkus Humberto, 1988) and Fiery Chicken (Ohnivý kuře, 2017–2018). For her acting performances on the silver screen, she has won two Czech Lions and several foreign awards, including The Silver Asteroid for best actress at the Trieste Science+Fiction Festival (in 1971, for Václav Vorlíček’s science fiction comedy You Are a Widow, Sir! – Pane, vy jste vdova!, 1970) and in 2000 for best actress in Alice Nellis’s comedy Eeny Meeny (Ene Bene, 1999) at the Sochi International Film Festival. In 2015, she was awarded the Crystal Globe at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival for her contribution to Czech cinema.

Stanislav Remunda, theatre director and actor, was Iva Janžurová’s life partner. One of their daughters, Theodora Remundová, is a documentary film maker and an actress, and the other, Sabina Remundová, is an actress and screenwriter, while their grandson Filip Remunda is a director, producer and cameraman.