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At 16, Czech actor Jiri Madl was set to pursue a professional ice hockey career until an elbow injury altered his path. With experience limited to high school plays and drama classes, he auditioned for and secured the lead role in Karel Janák's comedy Snowboarders. The film won the Czech Lion for the most successful movie of 2004, and Madl became the youngest individual ever included in the Czech "MF DNES Magazine" Personalities of the Czech Republic list.
Following Snowboarders, Madl appeared in three more comedies: Taming Crocodiles (2006), Rafters (2006), and Rock Con Artists (2006), the latter directed by Janák and centered on young musicians in Prague. Seeking to diversify beyond comedy, he then starred in Tomás Vorel's The Can (2007), a film about students and the graffiti culture.
His first English-language role was in Bathory (2008), directed by renowned Slovak filmmaker and European Film Academy member Juraj Jakubisko. Soon after, he featured in Night Owls (2008), directed by Oscar nominee and Berlin International Film Festival award-winner Michaela Pavlatova. For this role, he became the youngest actor to receive the Crystal Globe for Best Actor at the 2008 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.
Madl has maintained a steady career since then, including work on the 2011 international TV co-production Borgia, directed by Oscar-winning Oliver Hirschbiegl of The Downfall. He fulfilled a dream by starring in Bohdan Slama's Four Suns (2012), Juraj Nvota's Konfident (2012), and Miloslav Smídmajer's comedic 1980s-themed I'll Wake Up Yesterday, which was successfully released in May 2012. He then began filming Lousy Bastards, a roman à clef written and directed by Roman Kasparovsky and produced by Filip Cermák and Karla Stojáková. His most recent film, Colette (2013), a Holocaust drama based on a true story, featured Madl alongside French actress Clemence Thioly.
Passionate about languages, Madl studied English at the British Council, Italian at the Instituto Italiano di Cultura, and German at the Goethe Institute in Berlin.
Now 27, Jiri Madl wrote and directed his debut feature film, To See the Sea.
