ACTOR DIRECTOR PRODUCER SCREENWRITER AUTHOR SCHOLAR
Marek Probosz is an international stage, film, and television actor, who also writes and directs stage and film productions. renowned for his exceptional skills in acting, directing, and producing. Throughout his extensive career, spanning many decades, he has mesmerized audiences globally with his outstanding performances and creative projects, leaving a lasting imprint on the realm of entertainment.
Probosz has over 50 starring roles to his credit. His film and television career spans roles in Polish, Czech, German, French, Italian and American productions and co-productions. In the United States, he most recently guest-starred on CBS’ Scorpion. He has also had guest-starring roles on ABC’s Scandal, CBS’ Numbers, NBC’s JAG and USA’s Monk. He received strong reviews from The New York Times, The Hollywood Reporter and Variety for his portrayal of Roman Polanski in the CBS miniseries Helter Skelter.
He was awarded Best New York Premiere for his show Norwid’s Return 2022 and Best Documentary Show Award for The Auschwitz Volunteer: Captain Witold Pilecki 2018 which he directed and starred in at the world’s largest one actor show festival - UNITED SOLO on Broadway in NYC. Other Probosz’s stage credits include the role of Odysseus opposite award-winning British actor Henry Goodman in Philoktetes at the Getty Villa in Malibu. He starred opposite Oscar nominee Don Cheadle in “Tower of Babel” directed by Academy Award winner Jan A. P. Kaczmarek at Mark Taper Forum Los Angeles. He starred opposite Oscar nominee Don Cheadle in “Tower of Babel” directed by Academy Award winner Jan A. P. Kaczmarek at Mark Taper Forum Los Angeles. He wrote, directed and starred in the original Odyssey Theater production of AUM or Tormenting of Actors. Probosz’s theatrical adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s Salome, which he wrote, directed and starred in, was cited by the Czech National Critics Poll as Best Theater Production of 1987.
Marek Probosz starred as the Polish WWII hero Witold Pilecki in the film The Death of Captain Pilecki, which garnered the Special Jury REMI Award at the 2007 WorldFest-Houston International Film Festival and has had screenings at consulates, universities and embassies throughout the world. In 2013, he recorded the audiobook of The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery, by Captain Witold Pilecki, for Audible.com. The print book, on which Probosz’s United Solo Festival performance is based, received the prestigious PROSE Award for Biography and Autobiography from the Association of American Publishers and the Silver Award for Autobiography/Memoir from the Independent Book Publishers Association. It garnered excellent reviews from The New York Times Sunday Book Review, where it was chosen an Editors’ Choice, New Republic, Atlantic, Wall St. Journal, and many other media outlets, and has been translated and published foreign languages from China to Europe.
In Poland, Probosz recently had guest-starring roles in the popular Polish TV series Father Matthew and was a series regular on the Polish TV series Under the Common Sky. In 2014, he appeared in the Liam Neeson-narrated documentary Love Thy Nature. More recently, he worked on the Polish feature film Once Upon a Time in November (Best Film at Sicily’s Taormina Film Fest 2018), directed by Andrzej Jakimowski; and the Valley of the Gods (2019), directed by Lech Majewski, starring John Malkovich and Josh Hartnett. He also was a regular in the most successful Polish TV series M For Love, and the longest ever aired Polish TV series Clan. He appeared in the Polish TV series The Commission of Murders and For Good and for Bad. Probosz has directed 28 hours of interviews with the world renowned writer and Shakespeare scholar Jan Kott.
Probosz has written 11 feature film screenplays, including his most recent, the thriller Murderers. His short film Rebel, a psychological thriller on teen suicide, was a precursor to 2004’s YMI, an unflinching portrait of the dark forces lurking in the lives of teenagers, which Probosz wrote, directed, produced and starred in, making his U.S. feature debut. The film had its world premiere at The Other Venice Film Festival, where it won the Audience Choice ABBOT Award. In 2016, he directed Wedding Highlanders in Istebna, a play written by his grandfather Jerzy Probosz, for Polish Radio. Probosz is the author of two books published in Poland: The novel Eldorado (2009) and Call Me When They Kill You (2011), a collection of short stories. He also wrote two theater plays AUM, Or Torturing Actors (1990) and Auschwitz No.432 (2018) .
Since 2005 Probosz has been teaching at the UCLA Department of Theater Film and Television in Los Angeles, California. He also taught at the Aleksander Zelwerowicz Theater Academy in Warsaw, Emerson College in Los Angeles, Edgemar Center for the Arts in Santa Monica and Williams College MA. He has given lectures on screenwriting at international film events and has been a distinguished jury member at film festivals throughout Europe, including the Moscow International Film Festival and the International Theater and Film Festivals in Blagoveshchensk (Syberia), Muslim Cinema Kazan, (Tatarstan), IFF in Kyiv (Ukraine), Minsk (Bialarus), Tomsk, (Russia), etc. He has taught film acting master classes at The Aleksander Zelwerowicz National Academy of Dramatic Art in Warsaw. In November 2018 Probosz taught A Master Class – Acting For Camera at the world’s largest solo theater festival at Theater Row in NYC. During Spring 2021 Probosz was a visiting professor at Williams College (US#1 College in Liberal Arts), also he taught The New Summer Theater Program there.
As a special guest of the III Congress of the Polish Theater in Chicago he taught workshops acting for the camera. During the Closing Gala, he gave a lecture on Cyprian Kamil Norwid and gave a stage performance, Kordian on Mont Blanc by Juliusz Słowacki. Recently, he gave a dramatic performance at the University of St. Thomas Houston, TX. In November 2021 Probosz will be presenting an award winning movie The Death of Captain Pilecki (starring Probosz) at Texas A&M University, Austin.
Probosz earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in acting from the prestigious Polish National Higher School of Film, Television and Theatre in Łódź, Poland (1984), and a Master of Fine Arts degree in film directing from the prestigious American Film Institute in Los Angeles (1993).
Probosz’s work has been honored many times— in 2023 he was awarded The “OUTSTANDING POLE” Award, West Coast USA Division, in THE CATEGORY OF CULTURE by the Polish Promotional Emblem Foundation in recognition of his commendable successes and achievements, as well as his dedication to the promotion, remembrance, and honoring of Polish culture beyond the nation’s borders. He became a laureate of MODJESKA PRIZE 2022, a “life achievement” award recognizing the most eminent actors’ contributions to Polish and Polish American culture, by Modjeska Art & Culture Club in Los Angeles. He also received the POLA NEGRI POLITKA AWARD, for his outstanding achievements in film and theater around the world. Award and an honorary plaque was unveiled on the Pola Negri boulevard in Lipno, Poland 2022. The Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences in Vienna, Austria, awarded him with the Polish Diaspora “Oscar,” the Golden Owl, in the category of Film 2018, at a ceremony in Vienna. In 2011, Probosz was awarded the Mortui Sunt Ut Liberi Vivamus Bronze Medal in London and the Gold Medal Knight of Humanity in Auschwitz for his portrayal of Witold Pilecki and in recognition of his outstanding services in sharing around the world Pilecki’s ideals of heroism beyond religion, race and time.