“She was always called Libuška, never Libuše, because she was such a nice girl that you just couldn’t say otherwise. Libuška was an incredibly talented actress, you can remember her by touching you or by making you laugh, because she performed both of these tasks perfectly, “said actor and screenwriter Zdeněk Svěrák, who played with Šafránková in Kolj, for example.
“I guess I prefer her in the scene from the Village Village, when she calculates for her jealous husband how long she will last for one breath underwater. I don’t think I’ll be the only one who will remember her as a beautiful and cheerful woman, “remarked Svěrák, who also wrote the script for the mentioned comedy.
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Actress with her legs firmly on the ground
“She had an exceptional comedic talent, she had a joke, insight, self-irony,” says Jaroslav Sedláček, a film publicist and chief dramaturg of the Czech Television Film Center. “She didn’t play, she very skilfully avoided pathos, she managed to be very authentic and she was very physically fit to do that,” says Sedláček.
According to him, it was suitable for the poetics of Jiří Menzel’s films or, for example, for the works of Miloš Macourek and Václav Vorlíček. At the age of twenty, he made her famous with the film Three Nuts for Cinderella. The films of these creators, together with Zdeněk and Jan Svěráková, would be included by Sedláček among its key ones.
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“She was great even in serious roles, for me she is unforgettable as Barunka in Grandma, she played in the ingenious television comedy The Wedding Journey to Jiljí,” Sedláček emphasizes. There she played in a couple with Josef Abrhám, whose partner she was in a number of other films as well as in her personal life. “She managed to be a great partner, to listen to the other, not every actor can do that either,” thinks Sedláček.
“Apart from the fact that she was very charming, modest and shy, I also always admired her for not wanting to roll the role of Cinderella, she was able to stand firmly on the ground and not get carried away by one cloud or something like that,” Sedláček points out.
“I first met her in the 1990s, I presented her with an award at a festival in Pilsen, and I was nervous about it, and she reassured me that she was much more nervous. And when we waited there for 45 minutes and she crushed my elbow, I knew that her tremor was really bigger than mine, “Sedláček recalls.
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“For a long time, nothing took me as much as this news, Libuška was a rare phenomenon, she was multi-layered, mostly people are bold or scared, she could combine conflicting qualities that one just stood with an open mouth,” recalls her acting colleague Martin Huba.
“I don’t know how happy she was here between us, she had happy eyes, but there was still some sad tenderness behind them,” Huba explains. He would characterize her as a grate, but at the same time she was very careful. According to him, the big blow must now be for her loved ones, especially her husband Josef Abrhám.
A personality like Albert Einstein in physics
“A beautiful, intelligent man with a great sense of humor has left. Everything resists me to talk about Libuška in the past, I don’t think that’s possible, “Jan Hrušínský, the director of the Na Jezerce Theater, responded to the actress’s departure.
“I have always been excited that such a beautiful woman has such a wonderful sense of humor. This doesn’t happen so often with actresses. She didn’t play, but she existed in front of the camera and on stage, “recalls actor Milan Lasica.
“I first met her as a very young man and which young man of my generation was not in love with Líba Šafránková, that is, platonic of course, and then when we met, I had no idea that I had met the greatest actress I was in. life he knew, “reflects Vladimír Procházka, director of the Drama Club.
“She had a huge charisma, she was a very nice nice person. My grandfather used to say that a good actor must be a good person. These things came together for her, that’s why everyone liked her, “thinks the actor Václav Vydra.
“When you meet someone at the Prague film premiere, sometimes it’s a bit snobbish, sometimes a little hypocritical, but I’ve never had that impression with Mrs. Šafránková, so I would emphasize such sincerity and spontaneity,” recalled the writer Michal Viewegh, who wrote Báječná years under the dog.
“She managed to empathize with the character so immensely that goosebumps jumped on everyone, it’s unrepeatable, it’s a phenomenon, it’s like Albert Einstein in physics, It’s something incredible that it was. It is difficult to say what Libuška was, “recalls director Matěj Mináč, who led Šafránková in the film All My Loved Ones.
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