Wojciech Zygmunt Pszoniak ( Polish : ; 2 May 1942 – 19 October 2020) was a Polish film and theatre actor as well as theatre director and pedagogue. He received international recognition for portraying Moritz Welt in Andrzej Wajda's drama film The Promised Land. In 2016, he won the Polish Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

Life and career

Pszoniak was born in Lwów, Nazi occupied Poland, now in Ukraine. He gained international visibility following Andrzej Wajda's 1975 film The Promised Land, in which he played Moritz, one of the three main characters. The actor left Poland during the period of political unrest in 1980–81, when the Solidarity trade union began and was ended by the imposition of martial law on 13 December 1981. Pszoniak found roles in France, where he was living and working. After the fall of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989, Pszoniak appeared in Polish movies and plays. Internationally, he simplified his first name into Wojtek, which is the standard diminutive of the relatively formal Wojciech in the Polish language. Pszoniak often played Jewish characters, although he was not of Jewish descent. In France, this was partially attributable to his role in The Promised Land, as well as his foreign accent. Pszoniak did not speak French when he emigrated to France, so he learned his theatrical lines phonetically; in movies like Danton, where he played Robespierre, his voice was dubbed. An anecdote about his language skills relates that when he started speaking French, one director told him that he preferred his old accent. In 1990, Gustaw Holoubek ranked Pszoniak among the three greatest Polish dramatic actors post-1965 alongside Andrzej Seweryn and Piotr Fronczewski. He died in Warsaw, aged 78.

Selected filmography

Selected honours and distinctions