Just the mention of his name on a movie poster was enough to fill theaters. With a tall, athletic build, a meticulously trimmed mustache, and a gaze that spoke volumes, Josef Nedorost was a type of actor rarely seen in Czech cinema. Director Jaroslav Soukup once said of him: “He was a handsome man. A real Hollywood type.” Films like Fists in the Dark, The Devil’s Advocate, and especially Bony and Quiet, turned him into a true idol. Filmmakers predicted a promising career for him, and there was every reason to believe they were right.
Josef Nedorost was born on September 20, 1955, in České Budějovice. Unlike many of his peers, he didn’t immediately enroll in drama school after graduating. “I started working as a hospital attendant, carrying corpses, being a firefighter, being a lackey,” he recalled on the display 13th Chamber. He took the entrance exams for the Brno JAMU (Janáček Academy of Performing Arts) under unusual circumstances. He requested a medical leave from his military post in Košice, boarded a night train, and appeared before the commission just an hour after arriving at the hotel. They invited him back for a second round after the first. An older classmate then advised him to definitely craft time for the second round, saying that his type didn’t come along every day. After graduating from JAMU, Nedorost joined the theater in Brno and soon moved to the E.F. Burian Theatre in Prague. The theater provided a foundation, but his big break in film was yet to come. Director Jaroslav Soukup was preparing the drama Fists in the Dark and was looking for an actor for the role of a German opponent. However, he ran into a problem. Czech actors could act, but few looked credible in boxing trunks. “I was looking for actors who could at least box a little. And I found Josef Nedorost. He had charisma and, he could actually box,” Soukup recalled the moment he discovered the young man from České Budějovice among photographs of actors.
Preparation was rigorous. Every movement in the ring, every punch and retreat, was precisely choreographed, with no room for improvisation. Yet the scenes felt so natural that audiences believed every move. Nedorost was more than a match for Marek Vašut in the ring. Soukup soon noticed something else: “He was a heartbreaker. In the morning, I saw a elegant Polish woman leaving his hotel room. Girls loved him, and he knew how to enjoy it.”
Richard the Moneychanger and Years of Popularity
The success of Fists in the Dark opened doors to further roles. In The Devil’s Advocate, Nedorost moved among the most beautiful actresses in the country. Filming took place in Prague’s legendary Repre cinema. Director Václav Matějka described him succinctly: “He appealed to women due to the fact that he had the same qualities as the heroes in American movies.” He had to add three months of dancing to the three months of boxing for the role. Simultaneously, he was filming Bony and Quiet, where he played Richard Šindler, a moneychanger. That character became his most famous role. Director Vít Olmer knew why it suited him. “You could tell from Pepa that he’d been a mortician, that he’d been a worker and so on. You can tell!” With Richard came fame and, by the standards of the time, a lot of money. Unlike many of his colleagues, however, it didn’t proceed to his head. At the complete of the 1980s, he wisely invested in four apartments in Prague.
After the Velvet Revolution, offers began to dwindle, and the film world seemed to slowly forget him. Nedorost returned to his interest in paleontology, which had been awakened by reading Štorch’s Mammoth Hunters. He began walking through fields, searching for traces of the prehistoric past. “I’m fascinated by finding something that a person made three hundred thousand years ago,” he said. Trips with a friend gave him more satisfaction than theater at the time. He could fill two banana boxes with finds in a single day and returned to the site near Písečný vrch almost four hundred times.
In 1997, he set out to explore a Celtic site. When it started to rain, he and his friend took shelter in the nearest cowshed. The milkmaids were finishing their shift. “One woman offered me a drink of milk. Three days later, I had a fever of 104,” Nedorost described the fateful moment. Freshly milked milk infected him with tick-borne encephalitis. “So I’m probably one in a hundred who got tick-borne encephalitis without having a tick.”
He first fainted at home, sweating through the carpet and losing track of time and place. The doctor who was called briefly examined him and declared it was the flu, wanting to leave. But his father blocked the door. “Dad slammed the door in his face. He said it wasn’t the flu.” He insisted on further examination and was right. Doctors eventually confirmed encephalitis. The illness damaged his nerves, leading to paralysis and a wheelchair. He then spent months in the Kladruby rehabilitation institute. “I pulled myself together there because I saw that there were people who were much worse off,” Nedorost said. He eventually stood up, but the psychological consequences remained.
His appearance, which he had once cared so much about, had changed beyond recognition. He shaved off his mustache, let his long gray hair grow, and gained a significant amount of weight. He suffered from depression, anxiety, and delusions. He was constantly haunted by the feeling that someone was watching him. He changed phone numbers, eventually having seven. Director Tomáš Magnusek, who cast him in the series Čechovi in 2019, remembers the sight well: “He was a completely different person. He looked like a homeless man, he was fat.” Nevertheless, he appeared in the sequel to Bony and Quiet 2 in 2014 and shocked his colleagues with his performance. “At first we were a little afraid of him because we hadn’t heard anything about him. Then suddenly the guy showed up and played it perfectly,” recalled his film partner Roman Skamene. But then he withdrew again. “He’s not the type to go to a director and beg for a role,” explained psychiatrist Jan Cimický.
A Millionaire in the Sixth Floor
At the time of his death, Josef Nedorost owned four apartments in Prague, a house in České Budějovice, and land in Dívčice and Olešník. Yet he lived alone on the sixth floor of a panel apartment building. After his mother’s death, he had no close relatives left. He lived in seclusion in the building and rarely went out except to shop. On July 25, 2020, firefighters, assisted by police, had to force open the door to his apartment. Neighbors had called them because they hadn’t seen the actor for a long time. The autopsy confirmed that he died of complications from health problems he hadn’t been treating. That’s how the millionaire from the panel building, whom the world had long forgotten, met his end.
