František Filipovský

František Filipovský was a Czech actor and voice actor. Since 1994, Czech actors have been awarded the annual František Filipovský Award for best voice acting.

Life and family

Filipovský was born on 23 September 1907 in the Czech town of Přelouč, then part of Austria-Hungary.. His father was musician František Filipovský Sr., who was 62 at the time his son was born.
Filipovský died on 26 October 1993 in Prague. He is buried at the Olšany Cemetery in Prague.
Filipovský's daughter is actress and singer Pavlína Filipovská. Her daughter is journalist Pavlína Wolfová.

Career

The young Filipovský was interested in acting from an early age and began performing in theatre in the 1930s, with stints in Emil František Burian's Voiceband and at Osvobozené divadlo. Among other engagements, he worked as stage director in Jára Kohout's U Nováků Theatre in 1939, later moving to Švanda Theatre in Smíchov.
From 1945 to 1992, for 47 years, he performed at the National Theatre in Prague. He played mostly small roles, often comic ones. His most famous stage role was that of Harpagon in the adaptation of Molière's The Miser, which the National Theatre staged from 1950.
Throughout his career, Filipovský acted in more than a hundred Czechoslovak films and television productions. He dubbed many roles for the Czech versions of foreign films and became known primarily as the exclusive voice provider for French actor Louis de Funès.

Legacy

The František Filipovský Awards, named after the actor, are an annual Czech prize for voice acting, held in Filipovský's hometown of Přelouč. Officially launched in 1995, an inaugural event was held in 1994, when Filipovský was awarded in memoriam for his lifelong contribution to Czech voice acting.
Filipovského street in Prague's Satalice district is named after the actor.
A memorial plaque was erected at Filipovský's birth house in Přelouč in 1994.