Biografia

19 de abril de 1923 · Pelhrimov, Czechoslovakia [now Czech Republic]

2 de outubro de 2015 · Praga, República Tcheca

[on At zijí duchové! (1977)]: "Although I tried to avoid that bunch of excited children, I must say that Dana Vávrová caught my attention even then. She was very obedient and unusually smart for her age. Talking to her was a balm, unlike the other children. I also remember the scene with the dwarfs very fondly. To this day I don't know how the cinematographer and trickster Vladimír Novotný filmed it. Lots of strings, cameras, mirrors, but I had no idea how it worked. When I asked him, he always told me off, keeping it as his production secret. He did everything on his knees, without any graphics, let alone computers, but everything worked perfectly."

[on Kazdá koruna dobrá (1961)]: "The director Zbynek Brynych cast all the theatre and film comedians who were with us at the time. We laughed until we were holding our bellies during the screening of the day's work. We all predicted the film would be a huge success. But when the whole film was put together, it was a terrible mess."

[on his first filming experience]: "The year was 1946, the film was called V horách duní (1946), and my brother Oldrich Lipský and I played Gustav Hilmar's sons in it. It was, by the way, the first and the last film my brother and I were in. The story was set during the war and I acted as a liaison to the partisans. My first ever scene in front of the camera consisted of me bursting in the door, getting shot, falling on the bench and starting to die. Gustav Hilmar, Bohus Záhorský, Vilém Pfeiffer, Jan W. Speerger; all those seasoned pros played villagers, sitting around and advising me on how to die properly. One of them said, "When I die, I swallow a lot, so that my throat lump is moving." The other said, "No, it's better to roll your eyes." The third: "No, it's best to twitch your legs..." They just made fun of me, but I didn't know it then and in a sincere effort to be the best I did everything they advised me: swallowing like hell, rolling my eyes, twitching my legs..."

[on shooting Sest medvedu s Cibulkou (1972) with his brother Oldrich Lipský]: "The animals were the first priority for my brother, then he was concerned about the children, then the other actors, and at the very end of it all was me. He even asked me to be ready and made up every morning at seven o'clock, even when I'm not filming, just in case the bears or the pigs weren't in the mood or the kids didn't want to get up, just so the crew wouldn't have any downtime. So every morning I'd sit in the dressing room from seven o'clock, waiting to see if it was my turn."

[on genesis of Sest medvedu s Cibulkou (1972)]: "Sometime around Christmas 1970, I got a call from the writer Frantisek Kozík saying that he had a film for me and if I had a tip for a good director. "I would have a tip, my brother," I told him, and he said, "OK, let's make a deal. My brother Oldrich Lipský read the script, but the script was rather slow and sentimental, so he brought it to Milos Macourek and asked him if he could do something about it. Milos, however, took it from the ground up, as he was used to, so that practically nothing of Mr. Kozík's original version remained. Fortunately, Mr. Kozík was generous enough not to be offended, he withdrew his name from the film, but continued to cheer us on. He said he was very curious to see what we had done with it."