Zdeněk Svěrák

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Zdeněk Svěrák (born March 28, 1936 in Prague) is a Czech actor, humorist and scriptwriter. He is one of the most popular Czech cultural personalities. He was a member of Communist Party of Czechoslovakia from 1961 to 1969, which he discussed in interview for Czech magazine Reflex [1].

He studied pedagogy at Charles University of Prague. He has worked in a wide variety of capacities. His work contains more than 300 musical texts, plays and more than ten movies. Among his most famous film scripts are Kolya (Academy Award winning film) and The Elementary School (nomination for Academy Award). With his close friend, Ladislav Smoljak, they created the popular fictional personality (universal genius, inventor, sportsman, criminalist, poet, writer and philosopher) Jára Cimrman who won the voting for The Greatest Czech in 2005 (only the fact that Cimrman is fictional prevented him from actually winning).

His son Jan Svěrák is a film director.