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Marek Probosz is an international actor known for his work on stage, film, and television, as well as for writing and directing theatrical and film productions. He won the Best New York Premiere award for his show Norwid's Return (2022) and received the Best Documentary Show Award for The Auschwitz Volunteer: Captain Witold Pilecki (2018), which he both directed and starred in at the UNITED SOLO festival on Broadway, NYC—the world's largest solo performance festival. His prominent stage roles include playing Odysseus alongside award-winning British actor Henry Goodman in Philoktetes at the Getty Villa in Malibu. He also starred opposite Oscar nominee Don Cheadle in Tower of Babel, directed by Academy Award winner Jan A. P. Kaczmarek at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. Probosz wrote, directed, and starred in the original Odyssey Theater production of AUM or Tormenting of Actors. His theatrical adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s Salome, which he wrote, directed, and starred in, was named Best Theater Production of 1987 by the Czech National Critics Poll.
Probosz holds a Master of Fine Arts in acting from the Polish National Higher School of Film, Television and Theatre in Łódź, Poland (1984), and a Master of Fine Arts in film directing from the American Film Institute in Los Angeles (1993).
With over 60 leading roles, his film and television career spans Polish, Czech, German, French, Italian, and American productions and co-productions. In the U.S., he recently appeared in the Anna Nicole Smith biopic Huricanna, playing the father of a psychiatrist alongside Oscar winner Holly Hunter. He guest-starred in the feature film Love, Venezia and appeared on CBS’s Scorpion, ABC’s Scandal, CBS’s Numbers, NBC’s JAG, and USA’s Monk.
Critics from The New York Times, The Hollywood Reporter, and Variety praised his portrayal of Roman Polanski in the CBS miniseries Helter Skelter. In 2014, he featured in the Liam Neeson-narrated documentary Love Thy Nature, which won 27 awards. Probosz starred as Polish WWII hero Witold Pilecki in The Death of Captain Pilecki (2006), which received the Special Jury REMI Award at the 2007 WorldFest-Houston International Film Festival and has been screened globally at consulates, universities, and embassies. In 2013, he recorded the audiobook The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery by Captain Witold Pilecki for Audible.com. The book, on which his United Solo Festival performance is based, earned the 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 received outstanding reviews from the New Republic, Atlantic, Wall Street Journal, The New York Times Sunday Book Review (Editors’ Choice), and many others, and has been translated into multiple languages worldwide.
Since 2023, Probosz has toured with the one-actor show Norwid’s Return, which he directs and stars in, earning international recognition and awards in New York and across the U.S. This follows his successful direction and touring of the multimedia stage production The Auschwitz Volunteer, about Auschwitz infiltrator Captain Witold Pilecki, presented at American Jewish University, Hillel UCLA, and venues across Canada and the U.S.
In Poland, Probosz recently starred in the docudrama film The Burden (2023). He guest-starred in the popular Polish TV series Father Matthew and was a regular on Under the Common Sky. In 2018, he appeared in the Polish feature Once Upon a Time in November, which won Best Film at Sicily’s Taormina Film Fest, directed by Andrzej Jakimowski, and in Valley of the Gods (2019), directed by Lech Majewski and starring John Malkovich and Josh Hartnett. He was a regular on Poland’s most successful TV series M For Love and the longest-running Polish TV series Clan. He also appeared in The Commission of Murders and For Good and for Bad.
Probosz has directed 28 hours of interviews with renowned writer and Shakespeare scholar Jan Kott. He has written 11 feature film screenplays, including the thriller Murderess. His short film Rebel, a psychological thriller about teen suicide, preceded 2004’s YMI, an unflinching portrayal of the dark forces affecting teenagers, which he wrote, directed, produced, and starred in, marking his U.S. feature debut. YMI premiered at The Other Venice Film Festival, winning the Audience Choice ABBOT Award. In 2016, he directed Highlanders Wedding in Istebna, a play by his grandfather Jerzy Probosz, for Polish Radio. He is the author of two books published in Poland: the novel Eldorado (2009) and the short story collection Call Me When They Kill You (2011). He also wrote two plays: AUM, Or Torturing Actors (1990) and Auschwitz No.432 (2018).
Since 2005, Probosz has taught in the UCLA Department of Theater, Film and Television. He has also taught at the Aleksander Zelwerowicz Theater Academy in Warsaw, Emerson College in Los Angeles, Edgemar Center for the Arts in Santa Monica, and Williams College, MA. He has lectured on screenwriting at international film events and served as a distinguished jury member at numerous European film festivals, including the Moscow International Film Festival, and festivals in Blagoveshchensk (Siberia), Muslim Cinema Kazan (Tatarstan), Kyiv (Ukraine), Minsk (Belarus), Tomsk (Russia), and NNW Gdynia (Poland). In 2018, he taught a Master Class in Acting for Camera at UNITED SOLO, the world’s largest solo theater festival at Theater Row in NYC. In spring 2021, he was a visiting professor at Williams College, the top-ranked liberal arts college in the U.S., where he also taught The New Summer Theater Program. As a special guest of the III Congress of the Polish Theater in Chicago, he led workshops on acting for the camera and delivered a lecture on Cyprian Kamil Norwid, alongside a staged performance of Juliusz Słowacki’s Kordian on Mont Blanc. Recently, he performed dramatically at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, TX. Probosz presented the award-winning film The Death of Captain Pilecki (in which he starred) at Texas A&M University, College Station (2021), and the University of North Texas, Dallas (2022).
Probosz’s work has been widely recognized. In 2023, he received the OUTSTANDING POLE Award in the Culture category in the USA. In 2022, he was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Helena Modrzejewska Culture Club (MODJESKA PRIZE) in Los Angeles and the POLA NEGRI Lifetime Achievement Award at the 15th Pola Negri Festival in Lipno, Poland, where his commemorative plaque was unveiled on the Avenue of the Stars. He has also won a Polish Diaspora Oscar—the GOLDEN OWL in the Film category (Vienna, Austria, 2018), the MORTUI SUNT UT LIBERTI VIVAMUS medal (London, 2011), and the Gold Medal—Knight of Humanity in Auschwitz for his portrayal of Witold Pilecki and for his outstanding efforts in sharing Pilecki’s ideals and heroism worldwide (Auschwitz, 2011).
