2024-08-27 09:50:35
CTK
Updated 25. 8. 2024 10:25
Theater and film actor Karel Heřmánek died this Saturday at the age of 76. It was announced by the family. According to the website iDnes.cz, he committed suicide at the shooting range in Příbram, where he turned the gun on himself. Heřmánek played many prominent film roles. The audience remembers him as the handsome Hubert, Lucifer from the fairy tale S čerty nej žerty or dad Popper from the movie Death of Beautiful Deer.
“Yesterday (Saturday) in the afternoon, our beloved husband, father and grandfather Karel Heřmánek tragically left us. The pain that hit us is immeasurable,” the family said on the Facebook page of Divadla Bez zábradlí, which Heřmánek founded with his wife. She asked for privacy to be respected.
According to the server iDnes.cz, the actor committed suicide at the shooting range in Příbram. A spokeswoman for the Central Bohemian police said that the police went to one of the shooting ranges in Central Bohemia, where a man born in 1947 suddenly turned the gun on himself. Despite the assistance provided, he succumbed to his injuries on the spot.
Heřmánek was born on October 17, 1947 in Žižkov, Prague. He studied construction engineering and thought about architecture. Then he was interested in film directing, but since it was difficult to get into FAMU, he tried acting. Finally, he was accepted at JAMU in Brno.
He was with Jiří Bartoška, Pavlo Zedníček or Jana Švandová in his year. After school, Heřmánek, Bartoška and Zedníček joined the Brno Theater On a String.
After the season, the trio went to the Drama Studio in Ústí nad Labem and soon turned this theater into a stage for which audiences flocked from all over the country. In January 1974, the play Diogenes the Cynic premiered here, which was staged with them by the director Evald Schorm. Later, they also prepared Páral’s Professional Woman and other productions together.
In 1976, Heřmánek returned to Prague and until 1990 played in the Theater Na zábradlí, where he created his most important theater characters, for example in The Brothers Karamazov, especially under Schorm’s direction.
Subsequently, Heřmánek founded the Theater Without Rails, one of the first private theaters in the Czech Republic. He also transferred his other pivotal production here, Jakub and his master by Milan Kundera, in which he acted with Jiří Bartoška.
Heřmánek made his debut in front of the camera in 1972 in the TV movie Udstre bábi leta in the steppe, a train honked. He began to appear more in films at the end of the 70s, for example in the films On the Poacher’s Trail, A Woman for Three Men, Death of a Hitchhiker. He also played in the family comedy Krakonoš and skiers or in the drama Hádí jed. He achieved his most valuable artistic performances under the guidance of director Karel Kachyni, who chose him as the protagonist of his projects Good light, Where are you, gentlemen, where are you going? and Death of the Beautiful Fawns.
In Hynk Bočan’s successful fairy tale S čerty nejų žerty, he portrayed Lucifer, his darkest darkness, and played in the Oscar-winning film Kolja and the TV series Wild Land. After a longer hiatus, he appeared on screen in the comedy Tales of Ordinary Madness from 2005. Ten years later, he starred with his son Karl in the film Hunters and Victims.
He was also known for dubbing, for example Doyle played by Martin Shaw from the British series The Professionals spoke in his voice. Karel Heřmánek also met his second wife Hana in the dubbing studio. They had three sons together, and Heřmánek also had two daughters from her first marriage.
Video: Karel Heřmánek last appeared in the series Mozaika
The last time viewers could see Karel Heřmánek was in the TV series Mozaika. | Video: Voyo