Miloš Kopecký About this sound (Czech) (22 August 1922 in Prague – 16 February 1996 in Prague) was a Czech actor, active mainly in the second half of the 20th century.

Biography

He was born into the family of a furrier; his mother was a hatter. Since his childhood he was involved with the theatre and music, and after some unsuccessful attempts to study he chose the career of an actor. He began to appear on the stage in 1939, as a member of an amateur elocution group. During the German occupation of Czechoslovakia he performed with a collective of young artists, Tvar (The Shape). At the end of the Second World War, he was (having one Jewish parent) interned in the labor camp in Bystřice u Benešova. His mother was murdered in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Following the liberation he took up a career as a professional actor in the avant-garde studio Větrník (from 1945 to 1946), and afterward he was engaged in many Prague theatre scenes. A few years later he began to appear also in films and gradually became one of the most popular actors in Czechoslovakia. In the mid-1980s Kopecký acted in a politically biased documentary film about emigrants, but on the other side he presented very critical speech against communist régime in May, 1987, at the Fourth Congress of Dramatic Artists. He was married five times, once with Czech actress Stella Zázvorková. Kopecký suffered for many years from manic-depressive disease, partially caused by the death of his mother, who perished in a concentration camp.