Jiří Mádl

At 16, the young Czech actor Jiri Madl was poised to become a professional ice hockey player, but an elbow injury prevented him from pursuing this dream. Faced with a serious change in his plans and armed only with his experience in high school plays and drama classes, he auditioned for - and ultimately won the leading role - in Karel Janák's comedy Snowboarders. His first English-language performance came in the 2008 Bathory, directed by legendary Slovak director and European Film Academy member Juraj Jakubisko. Madl has been passionate about learning foreign languages, having studied at several institutions including learning English at the British Council, Italian at the Instituto Italiano di Cultura, and German at the Goethe Institute in Berlin.