MAREK PROBOSZ
MAREK PROBOSZ: Actor/Director
Marek Probosz is an international stage, film, and television actor, who also writes and directs stage and film productions. Probosz’s stage credits include the role of Odysseus opposite award-winning British actor Henry Goodman in Philoktetes at the Getty Villa in Malibu. He wrote, directed and starred in the original Odyssey Theater production of AUM or Tormenting of Actors. Probosz’s theatrical adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s Salome, which he wrote, directed and starred in, was cited by the Czech National Critics Poll as the No. 2 artistic event of 1986.
Probosz has starred and toured in a live show The Auschwitz Volunteer about Auschwitz infiltrator Captain Witold Pilecki, based on the award-winning book The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery (Aquila Polonica 2012), performing with Aquila Polonica president Terry Tegnazian. This multimedia stage production has been featured at American Jewish University, Hillel at UCLA, and in venues in Canada and other cities in the U.S. A revised version was presented as part of the 2018 United Solo Festival on Broadway.
Probosz has more than 50 starring roles to his credit. His film and television career spans roles in Polish, Czech, German, French, Italian and American productions and co-productions. In the United States, he most recently guest-starred on CBS’ Scorpion. He has also had guest-starring roles on ABC’s Scandal, CBS’ Numbers, NBC’s JAG and USA’s Monk. He received strong reviews from The New York Times, The Hollywood Reporter and Variety for his portrayal of Roman Polanski in the CBS miniseries Helter Skelter.
Probosz starred as the Polish WWII hero Witold Pilecki in the film The Death of Captain Pilecki, which garnered the Special Jury REMI Award at the 2007 WorldFest-Houston International Film Festival and has had screenings at consulates, universities and embassies throughout the world. In 2013, he recorded the audiobook of The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery, by Captain Witold Pilecki, for Audible.com. The print book, on which Probosz’s United Solo Festival performance is based, received the prestigious PROSE Award for Biography and Autobiography from the Association of American Publishers and the Silver Award for Autobiography/Memoir from the Independent Book Publishers Association. It garnered excellent reviews from The New York Times Sunday Book Review, where it was chosen an Editors’ Choice, New Republic, Atlantic, Wall St. Journal, and many other media outlets, and has been translated and published in foreign languages from China to Europe.
In Poland, Probosz recently had guest-starring roles in the popular Polish TV series Father Matthew and was a series regular on the Polish TV series Under the Common Sky. In 2014, he appeared in the Liam Neeson-narrated documentary Love Thy Nature. More recently, he worked on the Polish feature film Once Upon a Time in November (Best Film at Sicily’s Taormina FilmFest 2018), directed by Andrzej Jakimowski; and the upcoming Valley of the Gods (2019), directed by Lech Majewski, starring John Malkovich and Charlotte Rampling.
He was a regular in the most successful Polish TV series M For Love, and the longest ever aired Polish TV series Clan. He appeared in the Polish TV series The Commission of Murders and For Good and for Bad, and portrayed Professor N. in the 2016 political thriller Smolensk.
He has directed a full-length documentary, Jan Kott: Still Alive, and written 11 feature film screenplays, including his most recent, the thriller Murderers. His short film Rebel, a psychological thriller on teen suicide, was a precursor to 2004’s YMI, an unflinching portrait of the dark forces lurking in the lives of teenagers, which Probosz wrote, directed, produced and starred in, making his U.S. feature debut. The film had its world premiere at The Other Venice Film Festival, where it won the Audience Choice ABBOT Award. In 2016, he directed Wedding Highlanders in Istebna, a play written by his grandfather Jerzy Probosz, for Polish Radio. Probosz is the author of two books published in Poland: the novel Eldorado (2009) and Call Me When They Kill You (2011), a collection of short stories.
Probosz teaches in the UCLA Department of Television, Film and Theater and has taught at the Warsaw Theater Academy and Emerson College in Los Angeles. He has also given lectures on screenwriting at international film events and has been a distinguished jury member at film festivals throughout Europe, including the Moscow International Film Festival and the International Theater and Film Festivals in Blagoveshchensk, Kazan, Tomsk, Russia. He has taught film acting master classes at The Aleksander Zelwerowicz National Academy of Dramatic Art in Warsaw.
His work has been honored many times—most recently, the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences in Vienna, Austria, awarded him with the Polish Diaspora “Oscar,” the Golden Owl, in the category of Film 2018, at a ceremony in Vienna. In 2011, Probosz was awarded the Mortui Sunt Ut Liberi Vivamus Bronze Medal in London and the Gold Medal Knight of Humanity in Auschwitz for his portrayal of Witold Pilecki and in recognition of his outstanding services in sharing around the world Pilecki’s ideals of heroism beyond religion, race and time.
Probosz earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in acting in 1983 from the prestigious Polish National Higher School of Film, Television and Theatre in Lódz, Poland, and is a 1993 film-directing graduate of the American Film Institute. In 1998, he received a Master of Fine Arts degree granted by Academic Credentials Evaluation Institute in Los Angeles.
