Jerzy Stuhr

Jerzy Oskar Stuhr (Polish: [ˈjɛʐɨ ˈɔskar ˈʂtur]; 18 April 1947 – 9 July 2024) was a Polish film and theatre actor. Considered one of the most popular, influential and versatile Polish actors and an icon of Polish cinema, he also worked as a screenwriter, film director, voice actor and drama professor. He served as the rector of the Ludwik Solski Academy for the Dramatic Arts in Kraków for two terms: from 1990 to 1996 and again from 2002 to 2008.

Throughout his long and prolific professional career spanning over five decades, he appeared in 65 films including Camera Buff (1979), Sexmission (1984), A Year of the Quiet Sun (1984), Dekalog: Ten (1989), Three Colours: White (1994), Kiler (1997), Love Stories (1997) and The Big Animal (2000).

He received numerous awards and honours including the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic (2000), Gloria Artis Medal for Merit to Culture (2005), Polish Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Persona non grata (2006), Złota Kaczka Award (2008), Commander's Cross with Star of the Order of Polonia Restituta (2011), and Polish Academy Life Achievement Award (2018).

Stuhr was born in 1947 in Kraków to father Tadeusz Stuhr, a prosecutor, and mother Maria (née Chorąży) who worked as an accountant. His ancestors, Austrians Leopold Stuhr and Anna Thill, migrated within Austria-Hungary from Mistelbach to Kraków shortly after their wedding in 1879.

He graduated from the Stefan Żeromski High School No. 3 in Bielsko-Biała. Having obtained a degree in Polish literature from the Jagiellonian University in 1970, Stuhr spent the next two years studying acting at the Academy for the Dramatic Arts in Kraków (Państwowa Wyższa Szkoła Teatralna often shortened to PWST), where he became a professor.

From the early 1970s, he appeared in Polish theatre and worked in film productions, making his debut with the role of Beelzebub in Adam Mickiewicz's Dziady directed by Konrad Swinarski.

Having met film director Krzysztof Kieślowski in the mid-1970s, he continued to work with him until Kieślowski's death in 1996. To an international audience, Stuhr may be best known for his minor role as thick-witted hairdresser Jurek in Kieślowski's Three Colors: White, in which he starred alongside Julie Delpy, Janusz Gajos, and Zbigniew Zamachowski. In Poland and nearby countries, he was probably best known for the part of Max in Juliusz Machulski's 1984 dystopian cult comedy Seksmisja (one of the most popular Polish movies), and – to a younger audience – for lending his voice to the talking donkey in the dubbed Polish version of the Shrek trilogy.

Other important films include Kieślowski's The Scar (Blizna, 1976), Camera Buff (Amator, 1979) and Part 10 of The Decalogue series (1988), Machulski's Kingsize (1987), Kiler (1997) and Kiler 2 (1999), and Zanussi's Life for Life (1988). Stuhr also worked with Polish directors Agnieszka Holland, Andrzej Wajda and Krzysztof Zanussi.