Agata Kulesza

Kulesza was awarded the Best Actress prize at the 38th Gdynia Film Festival, and won her second Polish Academy Award for Best Actress.

Kulesza also went on to be nominated for the Paszport Polityki.

Internationally, Kulesza won the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress, Chlotrudis Award for Best Supporting Actress, and received nomination for National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress and European Film Award for Best Actress.

Suicide Room premiered at the 62nd Berlin International Film Festival and received positive reviews from critics while Kulesza's performance was noted.

Meanwhile, Rose premiered at Warsaw Film Festival and won Grand Prix and later won seven Polish Film Awards.

Agata Kulesza (born 27 September 1971) is a Polish actress who has appeared on film, television, and stage.

Kulesza was born on 27 September 1971 and raised in Szczecin, West Pomeranian Voivodeship, the daughter of a sailor.

She made her film debut playing the leading role in the 1993 comedy-drama Czlowiek z... and later appeared in films Poznań '56 (1996), The Spring to Come (2001), Moje pieczone kurczaki (2002), Expecting Love (2008) and Suicide Room (2011), for which she received Złota Kaczka Award for Best Actress.

She made her television debut appearing in an episode of comedy series, Żegnaj, Rockefeller in 1993 and later guest-starred in German television series Die Straßen von Berlin and Liebling Kreuzberg.

She made her big screen debut playing the leading role in the Polish comedy-drama film Człowiek z... directed by Konrad Szołajski.

While she was in high school, she decided she wanted to be an actress; in 1994, she graduated from the Aleksander Zelwerowicz National Academy of Dramatic Art in Warsaw.

Following her graduation, Kulesza worked as an actress at the Teatr Dramatyczny in Warsaw.

The following years, Kulesza played many supporting roles on film and television, such as Poznań '56 (1996) and The Spring to Come (2001), and performed in theatre productions.

During the 2000s, Kulesza played many supporting roles in film and worked as voice over actor in more than 20 animated features.

Her break came in 2002 with the leading role in the drama film Moje pieczone kurczaki directed by Iwona Siekierzynska, for which she received Prowincjonalia Film Festival Award in Koszalin.

On television, Kulesza starred alongside Magdalena Walach and Marzena Trybała in the Polsat drama series, Pensjonat Pod Róza (2004—2006) about three women in small hotel.

From 2006 to 2007 she starred in the Hela w opalach, a Polish remake of American sitcom Grace Under Fire.

In 2008 Kulesza, alongside her professional partner Stefano Terrazzino, won the eighth series of Dancing with the Stars: Taniec z gwiazdami.

She donated her winnings, a Porsche car, to an auction to benefit the Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity.

In 2009 she starred in the short-lived sitcom Synowie and in 2011 was a regular cast member in the telenovela Prosto w serce, a remake of Argentine series, You Are the One.

In 2011, Kulesza starred in the war drama film Rose, receiving her first Polish Academy Award for Best Actress.

Kulesza has won four Polish Film Awards and received total 11 nominations; three for her leading roles in the films Rose (2011), Ida (2013), and 25 Years of Innocence (2020); and for her supporting role in I'm a Killer (2016).

Since 2011, she has regularly performed at the Ateneum Theatre, also in Warsaw.

In 2011, Kulesza was seen in three drama films: Ki by Leszek Dawid, Suicide Room by Jan Komasa playing the mother of lead character, and Rose by Wojciech Smarzowski, playing the titular character.

For her performance in Rose, Kulesza received positive reviews from film critics, and was listed as one of the best in 2011 by Culture.pl.

Kulesza won her first Polish Academy Award for Best Actress for her role Róża, a Masurian widow who falls in love a Home Army soldier.

That same year, she was given a special award from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage recognising her acting career, as well as the Złota Kaczka awarded by Film magazine.

In 2013 she starred in the drama film Ida, for which she received positive reviews from critics and Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress, Polish Film Festival for Best Actress, Chlotrudis Award for Best Supporting Actress and her second Polish Academy Award for Best Actress, as well nomination for National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actress and European Film Award for Best Actress.

In 2013, Kulesza starred in the period drama film, Ida directed by Paweł Pawlikowski.

Playing Wanda Gruz, a Communist resistance fighter turned state prosecutor, Kulesza received widespread acclaim.

David Denby from The New Yorker noted that "Wanda tells her of her past in brief fragments, and Kulesza does more with those fragments—adding a gesture, a pause—than anyone since Greta Garbo, who always implied much more than she said."

Dana Stevens wrote that "As played, stupendously, by the veteran Polish TV, stage, and film actress Agata Kulesza, Wanda is a vortex of a character, as fascinating to spend time with as she is bottomlessly sad."

Jose Solis from PopMatters named her Best Supporting Actress writing: "Kulesza also allows her character’s flaws to show in heartbreaking ways, especially when we least expect it to. Watch the way she reacts to Trzebuchowska’s subtle horror upon realizing her parent’s fate, it’s a moment where we see the actress hold back out of what we will come to understand as love, or at least the only kind of love she knows how to provide. Where Ida could’ve simply been a film about the effects of WWII in Poland, the characters at its center make it so much more than that, and Kulesza in particular will prove to haunt you for weeks after you’ve seen the film."

In 2014 she received Order of Polonia Restituta.

Kulesza is a member of the Polish Film Academy.

It had been selected as Best Film of 2014 by the European Film Academy and as Best Film Not in the English Language of 2014 by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.

In 2014, Kulesza received Order of Polonia Restituta and Gloria Artis Medal for Merit to Culture.

After her breakthrough, Kulesza began appearing in various feature films and television productions.

She later appeared in films such as These Daughters of Mine (2015), The Innocents (2016), I'm a Killer (2016), Cold War (2018), The Hater (2020), Never Gonna Snow Again (2020), 25 Years of Innocence (2020), The Wedding (2021) and Green Border (2023).

Ida won the 2015 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, becoming the first Polish film to do so.