Obituary: Jiřina Jirásková

Less than one week after the death of the renowned film historian Karel Čáslavský, Jiřina Jirásková, an actress who starred in some 140 movies and stage productions over her lifetime, died Jan. 7 at the age of 81.

Described as a feisty woman who loved to play characters with a sharp tongue, her humor, wit and irony become trademarks of her performances in mostly comedy films.

"[Irony] was her main asset," the film historian Jaroslav Sedláček said in an interview on Radiožurnal, Czech Radio, shortly after her death. "Whether you look at her brilliant role as the secretary in Křtiny, her characters in Sestřičky, or [in the television series] Sňatky z rozumu and Zlá krev ... that was her forte, and it worked on the viewers."

Born in Prague Feb. 17, 1931, Jirásková had her acting talents first noticed by the Mother Superior at school in Kutná Hora. In 1946, Jirásková started her studies at DAMU (Theater Faculty of the Academy of the Performing Arts) and graduated in 1950. She spent a year performing in Hradec Králové before returning to the capital to join the Vinohrady Theater, where she would spend most of her professional life, eventually becoming its director in 1990, a job she held until 2000.

Admirers of Jirásková's decades of work queued around the block Jan. 11 to pay their last respects to her as she lay in state at the Vinohrady Theater. This public display of appreciation was followed by a private farewell ceremony led by the theater's current director, Tomáš Töpfer, and attended by many fellow actors and actresses with whom Jirásková worked and shared the stage during her career, including former First Lady Dagmar Havlová. Among other works, Havlová and Jirásková had appeared together in Křtiny and the 1981 musical comedy, Trhák.

Křtiny and Trhák were both directed by Jirásková's longtime companion, Zdeněk Podskalský. But it was her turn as Marcela, a working-class girl in Prague who pretends to be from high society and befriends a group of three workers from the countryside who are also pretending to be wealthy, in Podskalský's Světáci, that has become perhaps her most recognizable character.

Světáci, released in October 1969, was one of Jirásková's last films until 1983 as the 1970s period of Normalization did not allow her to appear on the big screen. In 2006, she was awarded the presidential Medal of Merit (Second Class) for her dedication and contribution to culture. At the ceremony, one of her fellow actresses from Světáci, Iva Janžurová, was given the same recognition.

Jirásková will be interred Saturday, Jan. 19, in the south Bohemian town of Malenice, in the same cemetery where both Podskalský, who died in 1993, and Jirásková's first husband, actor Jiří Pleskot, lie buried.

In Prague, Cardinal Dominik Duka led a funeral Mass Jan. 14 in the Church of Our Lady Before Týn on Old Town Square.

The last film in which Jirásková participated was Jiří Menzel's comedy, Sukničkáři, currently in post-production and set to premiere locally in April.

André Crous can be reached at
acrous@praguepost.com