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Edita Brychta was born in Prague but grew up in London after her family fled the 1968 Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia. Her parents, Jan and Lida Brychta, are internationally acclaimed artists, and her brother Alex Brychta MBE is a globally published book illustrator.
Edita’s acting career began in childhood with the Czech film Kinoautomat, the world's first interactive movie, showcased at the 1967 Expo in Montreal. At 16, after joining London's National Theatre Youth Workshop, she shifted her focus from aspiring ornithologist to pursuing acting.
She trained at LAMDA and was quickly signed by top agent Ken McReddie. In the UK, Edita portrayed Juliet in Romeo & Juliet, Ophelia in Hamlet, Desdemona in Othello, and Marguerite in the world premiere of Václav Havel's Largo Desolato, directed by Tom Stoppard. She also played Sybil Burlington in the award-winning West End production of Daisy Pulls It Off, produced by Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Her television credits include starring roles in series like Maelstrom, Gentleman and Players, Lovejoy, and Taggart, along with the award-winning The Escape (known as Border in the UK) and the BAFTA-nominated The Britoil Affair.
Flying In The Branches was created especially for Edita to star as a Czech girl escaping communist Czechoslovakia.
Her portrayal of Princess Diana in NBC's Behind The Palace Doors brought her to the US, where she took on diverse roles alongside Julia Roberts in Conspiracy Theory, Jim Carrey in Man On The Moon, James Garner in The Rockford Files, and Angela Lansbury in Murder She Wrote. She also appeared with Stellan Skarsgård and Lena Olin in the Swedish film Friends.
Edita collaborated with directors Ronald Neame, Milos Forman, Richard Donner, and appeared in Mark Rydell's Crime Of The Century for HBO alongside Isabella Rossellini and Stephen Rea.
In the Czech Republic, she acted in her native language in two films, notably leading in Jan Sverák's Akumulator 1. Her linguistic talents also led her to star in the French TV series Cinq Filles à Paris.
Her expertise in languages, accents, and dialects has made her highly sought after for voiceover work in national campaigns and animated films such as Ice Age: Continental Drift, Cosmos, and The Bunbury Tails, as well as major features including The Bourne Identity, Pirates Of The Caribbean, and Man of Steel, where she voiced the mother ship.
Among numerous video games featuring her voice is Ming Xiao in Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. She has performed in BBC radio plays, including the acclaimed Me, Cheeta: My Life in Hollywood with John Malkovich.
Edita has narrated many audiobooks, including Jane Goodall's Seeds of Hope, and received an Audie nomination for the trilogy This Man. She delivered a live narration of Leonard Bernstein's The Kaddish at Royce Hall in Los Angeles.
For LA Theatre Works, she appeared in productions of Daniel Deronda, A Room With a View, Watch on the Rhine, and the Tony Award-winning Oslo.
Edita is married to producer David Ladd and has one daughter, Lauren Cassidy, from a previous marriage.
She is passionate about open water swimming, having completed four swims from Alcatraz Island, crossed the length of the Golden Gate Bridge three times, and swum the 10K distance from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Bay Bridge twice, earning numerous medals.
Updated Jan 11, 2020
