He became famous for many television and film roles, the most popular of which is called Luboš and comes from the comedies How to Pull a Stool from a Whale and How to Get Dad to a Reformatory. He also created countless roles on the theater stage and on the radio. On Wednesday, acting bard František Němec will celebrate his eightieth birthday with a cultured and noble speech.
Actor František Němec celebrates his 80th birthday. Recall his illustrious career | Photo: CTK
The road Francis the German she led to acting through the theater. After studying at DAMU in Prague, from 1964 he was employed by the Municipal Theaters of Prague for eighteen years. He played a number of rewarding roles there – for example, Orestes (The Flies), Yossarian (Chapter XXII), Lot (The Kingdom of God on Earth), Proteus (Two Noblemen of Verona), The Robber (On the Painted Glass) or Adamar (Hallelujah, Good People).
At the beginning of the 1960s, he also started to make his mark in film. He played one of the first characters in the occupation drama Transport from Paradise directed by Zbyňek Brynych. This was followed, for example, by a role in the drama 7 Killed, which he filmed according to his own script (together with Jelena Mašínová) Pavel Kohout, he appeared as a “secret” in the vault film directed by Karel Kachyna Ucho, and in 1970 he created the character of a company officer in a detective story by director Josef Mach from the series about Major Kalash called Na kolejích čeča vrah. However, the German has more detective roles to his credit, such as criminalist Captain Jindřich Marha from the film directed by Jiří Hanibal Time works for a murderer.
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He soon drew attention to himself in the 1974 series There was once a house directed by František Filip, in which he created the character of Walter from the Sudetenland, or in the large-scale normalization propaganda project 30 cases by Major Zeman, where he was the head of counterintelligence, lieutenant Žitný.
In the meantime, however, he had already filmed a legendary series with director Jaroslav Dudek A hospital on the outskirts of townin which he played the role of vascular surgeon Řehoř with a passion for listening to classical music and a weakness for doctors Králova played by Jana Štěpánková and Čeňková with the face of Eliška Balzerová.
A non-athlete to an athlete
His popularity rose to its peak in the second half of the seventies, when with the director Maria Poledňáková made the successful family comedies How to Pull a Stool off a Whale and How to Put Daddy in a Reformatory, in which he co-starred Jana Preiss a Tomáš Holý. As the head of the mountain service and mountaineer dazzled the audience, everyone believed in his commitment, but the actor himself admitted years later that he is not a sporty person at all.
Source: Youtube
“The first acquaintance with Skout, which is the name of the rock on which we climbed with our film son Vašek, took place in the following way. They brought me under that rock by taximeter. So we stood and then I asked if there was someone in charge on the spot who could tell me what to do, how to actually climb such a rock. Two boys, climbers, stood out from the crowd. And they said: Here, you have to take the part-time job, a dragon loop will be made for it, we will teach you that… I had to go through it with them, train. Not much, but a little. But in the end, everything seemed believable,” said the German, who is otherwise sparing with interviews for the media, in Všechnopárty at Karel Šíp.
Good neighborhood and archive
Over the years, he has become one of the most sought-after actors in the Czech television. He played in films of different genres, for example in the drama Ashes and Stars, in the biographical film about Jakub Jan Ryb Noc pastyřů, in the drama Master Kampanus or in the horror story Travis. And also in series such as Ambulance, Cirkus Humberto or Dlouhá milé. The list of his fairy-tale roles is also varied. Among them are, for example, Lollipop and the Mustache, Blue Bird and Tom in Goosebumps.
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In the new millennium, for example, he attracted the attention of the exceptionally repulsive character of the selfish friend of Professor Svobodová from the series Dobrá čtvrť, we also saw him in other series The Devil’s Trick, Ah, those murders!, The life and times of Judge AK, Labyrinth and, most recently, Crimes of Great Prague.
Among the films, it is worth mentioning his role in The Loners or Rebels and the television productions The Man Who Came Out of the House, False Accusations, The Bankrupts, That Hot Summer in Marienbad, Post Bellum, Piknik, Crime in Polná and, above all, Archive, where the actor transformed into an aging philosopher Josef Brzek, dealing with the translation of Aristotle. He lives in an orderly and happy relationship with his wife Věra, but one thing has been keeping him awake for a long time – who is to blame for his expulsion from the faculty during normalization. Without Věra’s knowledge, accompanied by her son Peter, she visits the StB archive in Pardubice, where she learns overwhelming facts.
František Němec in the series Crimes of Great PragueSource: with the permission of Czech Television/Miroslav Kučera
As for his work for the theater – at the beginning of the eighties, František Němec changed his theatrical engagement. He moved from the Municipal Theaters of Prague to the National Theater, where he particularly impressed in the roles of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Goethe’s Faust.
“I didn’t dream about the character of Hamlet, I was simply cast in it. You’ll be horrified when you find out because it’s a lot of work. But I couldn’t refuse such an offer, because I wanted to meet Miroslav Macháček, who was directing Hamlet at the time. I wanted to work with him. Well, maybe it paid off,” said the artist at the aforementioned Všechnoparty. He is still a guest on the stage of the National Theater to this day, in the productions Kytice and Audience with the Queen.
The old masters
For several years, he has also been the first star of Prague’s Ungelt Theater, which became a showcase of his acting and where the audience could see him in seven roles. The very first one left an indelible mark in the history of this scene – many people still remember Ledňáček with him, Alena Vránová and Petr Kostka. He also acted there in the productions The Biggest Diamond in the World, Express to the West, Pardál, To mám ale kliku or Mr. Halpern and Mr. Johnson, in which Petr Kostka is the German’s partner.
The fact that it is still sold out and recently had its 300th rerun is the most telling of the success of the production.
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The latest acting opportunity for František Němek is in Ungelt Dutch tragicomedy The Old Masters, which takes place in the actor’s dressing room. In it, two feuding brothers from a famous acting family meet during the rehearsal of a production. One is famous and successful and the other has lived his whole life in his shadow. On their knees, they decide to restart their theater careers in a joint project.
František Němec and Milan Hein in the production of the play Old Masters Source: Jan Malíř
“František Němec is an exceptionally intelligent and noble person, a prince among actors who does not care about soloing on stage. For him, the most important thing in the theater is dialogue. And in Ungelt, only those who want to play together play together, no one here is engaged. If František didn’t want to play with me, he doesn’t play with me, and it won’t change our relationship. It is a great honor for me that, in my eyes, the best living Czech actor is performing with me,” said the founder and principal of this scene, Milan Hein, who portrays the less successful of the brothers in the mentioned piece.
František Němec is also involved in dubbing – for example, he voiced the character of Randall from the British series Randall and Hopkirk or Sir Humphrey Appleby from the series Sure, Mr. Minister and Sure, Mr. Prime Minister. He also worked as a teacher at the Prague DAMU for several years. Among other awards, he won the Thalia last year for lifetime championship. A year earlier, he was inducted into the Hall of Fame on the occasion of the opening of the new season of the National Theater in Prague.
2023-08-09 05:00:37
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