| Vladimír Pucholt | |
| Birth Date: | 30 December 1942 |
| Birth Place: | Prague, Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia |
| Occupation: | actor / physician |
| Years Active: | 1952–1970, 1999 / 1974–present |
| Spouse: | Rosemary |
| Children: | Camilla, Lindsay |
Vladimír Pucholt (born 30 December 1942) is a Czech-Canadian physician and former actor. His specialization are pediatrics and neonatology.[1]
Vladimír Pucholt was born in Prague in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (present-day Czech Republic). His father was an attorney, who after the Soviet-backed communist putch in 1948 refused to serve the regime. So his son, Vladimír, was not allowed to study medicine, had to spent a year in a factory and was allowed to the Theatre Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (DAMU) to formally qualify as an actor.[2]
After first roles as a child film actor, beginning at the age of nine and acting in supporting roles in a few films he gained fame as Čenda in Miloš Forman's Black Peter. His next roles as Filip in Rychman's Starci na chmelu and as Milda in Forman's Loves of a Blonde, with quite a some success abroad, together with Hana Brejchová as Andula,[3] turned him, and her, to one of the most famous young actors in Czechoslovakia.
After graduating DAMU in 1965, he joined the newly founded The Drama Club / Činoherní klub in Prague. Jan Kačer, who searched for suitable members for the ensemble, said of the selection of actors: "I wanted them to be people who hated totalitarianism, while full with imagination, creativity, and freedom."
In 1967 at the height of his popularity he decided to emigrate to the United Kingdom to study medicine.[4] He was admitted to study at the University of Sheffield, Medical School thanks to a recommendation letter by the film director Lindsay Anderson. The writer John Le Carré lent him money for tuition.[5] He graduated with a degree in medicine, and with the gold medal, from Sheffield in 1974.
In 1981 he, his wife Rosemary and their young daughter Camilla and son Lindsay (six and four back then),[6] moved to Toronto, Canada, where, after a stopover year in North Bay, Pucholt worked as a paediatrician in Toronto hospital and in his own practice, together with his wife, until their retirement.
He returned to acting only in Vojtěch Jasný's film Return of the Paradise Lost / Návrat ztraceného ráje (1999).
"I have no intention of returning to acting. I did this because Vojtěch's story touched my heart. I wanted to explain something with it."
– Vladimír Pucholt, 1999, in an interview with reflex.cz[7]
He sharply observes the situation, totalitarian heritage, in his first homeland:
"We owe a few people a few slaps and those few slaps didn't fall. We owe justice.
... Decent people voluntarily give up governing in favor of crooks.
... the dirty money that Mr. Klaus said he didn't know about is still here. It's imprinted on the bodies of dirty people. It should have been peeled off, because it didn't belong to them, and given to people who would use it for good things.
... There are a lot of people who had to leave their homelands and look for new homes. If you look at the twentieth century, there is nothing crueler and more deadly in history, because we have much better things to fight about.
... The idea of one of those crooks going to ask for forgiveness still haunts my mind. I can't remember anyone doing that. I don't know anyone like that either. The guilty prefer to say that "mistakes were made" or "those were the times" and many other sayings behind which they hide their personal guilt."
– Vladimír Pucholt, 1999, in an interview with reflex.cz
Činoherní klub – actor in the productions[9]