- Daughter Maria Ekier (b. 1943).
- Daughter Agnieszka Kilanska (b. 1954).
- When choosing a field of study, she initially thought about medicine, but because studying in this field was too expensive, she decided to trade. She began studying at the Cracow School of Economics , but interrupted it in the middle of the first academic year due to typhus and returned to Nowy Sacz. When she recovered, persuaded by her friends from the middle school, already students, she decided to take acting exams.
- Her parents were teachers and lived on a farm near the school where they taught. She had an older sister Irena and a younger brother Jerzy. Her father died suddenly of appendicitis when she was 9 years old. After his death, her mother decided to move from Kosarzyska to a tenement house in Nowy Sacz , where Danuta attended a private gymnasium of mathematics and natural sciences for girls.
- Her acting career, which began in September 1939, ended in November 2016, at the age of 101.
- In 2018, the first biography of Danuta Szaflarska was published, entitled Danuta Szaflarska. Her time . It was written by Gabriel Michalik . Another biography, titled Szaflarska. Playing to Live was published in 2019 by Katarzyna Kubisiowska.
- In the 1940s, considered the leading lover of Polish cinema, in later decades she was known primarily for her comedic roles in theater plays staged by Warsaw theaters ( Wspolczesny Theatre, National Theatre, Dramatic Theatre, Variety Theatre ).
- The actress became a member of the honorary support committee of Bronislaw Komorowski before the early presidential elections in 2010 and before the presidential elections in 2015.
- She was the longest working and living Polish actress.
- In 2008 she was awarded the Zlota Kaczka for the best Polish actress of the century.
- She performed in the Television Theatre , radio dramas of the Polish Radio Theatre, TV series, and also dubbed foreign films.
- Szaflarska was awarded the Order of Polonia Restituta, Commander's Cross and Commander's Cross with Star, one of Poland's highest Orders and Gold Medal of Gloria Artis (2007).
- In Nowy Sacz, Danuta attended an amateur theater group led by a teacher and portrait painter, Boleslaw Barbacki . In 1927, on the stage of the Nowy Sacz Dramatic Society, she played the role of Michasia in Horsztynski, a drama by Juliusz Slowacki, and then appeared in Tom Thumb according to the Brothers Grimm.
- She married her first husband, Jan Ekier, a pianist, in 1942.
- In 1939 she graduated from the National Institute of Theater Arts in Warsaw and in the same year, after the outbreak of World War II, she made her stage debut at the Teatr na Pohulanka in Vilnius . Two years later, she returned to the capital, where she played in underground theaters.
- Danuta Szaflarska was a Polish film and stage actress.
- Her second husband, Janusz Kilanski, was a radio announcer.
- In the film, she was rediscovered in the 1990s. Both critics and viewers appreciated her personality and temperament.
- Szaflarska participated in the Warsaw Uprising ( a major World War II operation by the Polish underground resistance to liberate Warsaw from German occupation) as a liaison.
- After the war, she performed in the Stary Theater for a year , and then in the Chamber Theater of the Soldier's House in Lódz.
- She appeared in over 40 film and over 80 theater roles.
- She was a regular player of Teatr Rozmaitosci in Warsaw, specializing in modern and progressive drama.
- In 2007, she was awarded the distinction for the best actress at the 32nd Polish Film Festival in Gdynia , for her role in the film Time to Die . Earlier, twice, in 1991 (for Devils, Devils ) and in 1993 (for Pozegnanie z Maria ) she won the award for the best supporting actress at this festival.
- Under the pseudonym "Mlynarzówna" she took part in the Warsaw Uprising in 1944 as a liaison officer (adjutant) to Jan Ciecierski ps. "Rosien". On the first night of the uprising, she built barricades in Sródmiescie, but the next day after the Germans occupied this area, she had to flee with her mother, one-year-old daughter and husband Jan Ekier .
- The actress returned to the stage in 1988, after a three-year hiatus, as a guest star in contemporary plays: first as Delia in Alan Ayckbourn's Farce for Three Bedrooms , directed by Marcin Slawinski, staged at the Kwadrat Theater in Warsaw, and then as an Old Woman in the play Hour of a Cat Per Olov Enquist, directed by Piotr Cieslak at the Powszechny Theater in Warsaw . Her portrayal of the Old Woman had features characteristic of characters in her last stage of professional activity in theater and film, which arouse the favor of viewers and with which she is associated, such as calmness, wisdom, life experience.
- Andrzej Kolodynski , editor-in-chief of the Kino monthly , noted that although her achievements in film are the history of the entire post-war Polish cinema, the actress flourished again at the age of about seventy. She played her most mature roles, the doctoral role in Pozegnanie z Maria and Aniela in Time to Die , being in her old age.
- In the years 1966-1985 she performed at the Dramatic Theater in Warsaw , where, however, she rarely received roles in which she could demonstrate her acting skills. Her sense of humour, charm and versatility (after all, she performed both in the classical and contemporary repertoire) could be admired by the audience primarily in comedic roles.
- She performed under the fictitious name "Danuta Nowak" during the war at concerts for the fighting insurgents and civilians, in which also participated, among others, Mira Ziminska, Irena Kwiatkowska and Mieczyslaw Fogg . After the uprising, she left the destroyed city, first went to the transit camp in Pruszków , and from there to Krakow.
- In the mid-1930s she moved to Warsaw , where in 1939 she graduated from the National Institute of Theater Arts (PIST). Initially, the examination committee did not want to admit her to the school, because she had no knowledge of the history of the theater and sent her back for a retake. The vote of the first director of PIST, Aleksander Zelwerowicz, decided about the admission.
- After the liquidation of the Lodz Chamber Theater in 1949, Szaflarska moved with director Erwin Axer's team to Warsaw. She started working first at the Contemporary Theatre , where she performed until 1954, and then at the National Theatre , where she acted in the years 1954-1966.
- She took part in the production of the first feature-length Polish post-war film, Forbidden Songs , directed by Leonard Buczkowski , commemorating the anti-German and partisan music of the inhabitants of Warsaw during the occupation . She played the leading female role - Halina Tokarska, a young Varsovian active in the underground organization. Even before the shooting for Forbidden Songs was completed , she appeared on the cover of the first issue of the " Film " magazine, the same issue also featured an interview with the actress, conducted by Zbigniew Pitera . The film's budget was not high, working conditions were difficult, and the film was not originally intended to be a feature-length production. The actress appeared on the set in her own dress, the only one in which she walked around the city, because she had no other.
- From 1985 on she played in many films, thanks to which she gained the recognition of the next generation of viewers, who did not remember her previous successes.
- Among her greatest achievements in the theater is Wladka in the comedy Ashantka by Wlodzimierz Perzynski, directed by Stanislawa Perzanowska from 1957 - a primitive girl from the social lowlands (the name of the play refers to the African Ashanti people ), she starts an affair with a young landowner Edmund Lonski (played by Andrzej Lapicki ) which is the cause of his demise. Her virtuosity was revealed in another comedy role - Katarzyna in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew , directed by Tadeusz Aleksandrowicz , staged at the Baltic Dramatic Theater in Koszalin in 1961 (Szaflarska made guest appearances there).
- On September 14, 1939, she made her debut at the Teatr na Pohulanka in Vilnius as Pernette in Puget's Happy Days, directed by Bronislaw Dabrowski . During the next performance, on September 17, the day the USSR invaded Poland, the whistling of shells and the roar of Soviet artillery could be heard in the theater in Vilnius. The terrified audience left the auditorium, but the actors finished their performance, obeying Zelwerowicz's rule, which said: Never stop the show.
- In 2012, Dorota Kedzierzawska made the documentary "Another World" , in which the then 97-year-old Danuta Szaflarska talked about her life for 97 minutes.
- Her second marriage also did not last, it ended in divorce in 1960 - as Szaflarska claimed: "Another husband had a problem with the fact that I have my own opinion and I don't ask anybody's permission".
- Although she lived in Warsaw from 1949 (for over fifty years in the Old Town ), she willingly visited her hometown of Kosarzyska. She had a wooden house there, to which she often came.
- She appeared on stage for the last time in November 2016 in the role of the Gloomy Old Woman in a Wheelchair in Dorota Maslowska's performance "Between Us, It's Good", directed by Grzegorz Jarzyna.
- She was delegated in 1981 by the Primate's Committee for Assistance to Persons Deprived of Liberty and their Families to observe the trials of the arrested workers of Ursus and Huta Warszawa . It was then that she met Father Jerzy Popieluszko , with whom she became friends - he married her daughter and baptized her grandson .
- Theater director Erwin Axer said: Danusia has always been open to life. But today it can be seen that when he deals with the theater, it is the whole truth. Each of her roles shines like crystal. Working with her is one of the director's greatest pleasures. She is the tuning fork that allows you to judge the purity of the whole orchestra's playing.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content