At 16, the young Czech actor Jiri Madl was poised to become a professional ice hockey player. But an elbow injury prevented him from pursuing this dream. Faced with a serious change in his plans and armed only with his experience in high school plays and drama classes, he auditioned for, and ultimately won the leading role over more than 1000 other actors who auditioned for Karel Janák’s comedy Snowboarders. Awarded the Czech Lion as the most successful film of 2004, Madl was simultaneously named one of The Personalities of the Czech Republic by the Czech MF DNES Magazine, the youngest ever chosen.
Following the success of Snowboarders he took on three more comic roles: Taming Crocodiles (2006), Rafters (2006) and with his “cinematic father” Karel Janák Rock Con Artists (2006), a black comedy about young musicians in Prague. Feeling the need to move away from comedies and to try something different, his wish came true when Tomáš Vorel cast him in The Can (2007), a film about students and the graffiti community.
His first English-language performance came in the 2008 Bathory (a Czech/UK/Slovak/Hungarian co-production) directed by legendary Slovak director and European Film Academy member Juraj Jakubisko. Shortly after he starred in Night Owls (2008) directed by Oscar Nominee and the Berlin International Film Festival award-winner Michaela Pavlatova. His role in this film won him the CRYSTAL GLOBE as BEST ACTOR at the 2008 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. Madl became the youngest actor ever to receive this award in the festival’s 40 year history.
He has been working continuously since. These projects include the 2011 international television co-production Borgia (a France/Germany/Italy co-production) directed by The Downfall’s Oscar winning Oliver Hirschbiegl. When he was cast by the acclaimed director Bohdan Slama, another dream came true in Slama’s latest drama Four Suns to be released in 2012 and by Juraj Nvota in his 2012 film Konfident (a Czech Republic/Slovakia/Poland co-production), the true story about a young Czech secret service (STB) agent before the fall of the Iron Curtain and the Velvet Revolution of 1991. In post-production now, also for release in 2012 is BioIllusion’s comic revisit to the 1980s—I’ll Wake Up Yesterday starring Jiri and directed by Miloslav Šmídmajer
Madl has been passionate about learning foreign languages, having studied at several institutions including learning English at the British Council, Italian at the Instituto Italiano di Cultura, and German at the Goethe Institute in Berlin. Now 24, Jiri splits his time between Berlin and Prague and has just completed a screenwriting class at the New York Film Academy. He speaks excellent English, German and Italian. He is represented by The Derek Power Company, a Beverly Hills, California based Personal management firm.
For a printable version (PDF) of all of Jiri's credits, please click here.