Jiří Štěpnička

Jiří Štěpnička was born Jiří Samec on 16 April 1947 in London, England, where his mother, the actress Jiřina Štěpničková (1912 to 1985), was briefly staying. His father was Jan Samec (1917 to 1988), an academic painter and drawing teacher from Strakonice whom Štěpničková married shortly before their son was born. Being born in London gave him British citizenship, and at his christening he was given five names, Jiří Jan Jaroslav Martin Otto, after his godparents. His godfather was Jan Masaryk, son of the first Czechoslovak president.

In early 1951, shortly before his fourth birthday, his mother tried to cross the border in the Šumava region with him in her arms. The guide was a secret police informer, the escape was a staged trap, and she was arrested and sentenced to fifteen years for treason. She served about ten years before an amnesty. The boy spent around six months in a children's home before his father took him to Karlovy Vary, where he grew up with his father's new family and was also cared for by an aunt and his grandmother. He later recalled learning somersaults and falls with circus children in the children's home, skills that later made him a notably physical stage actor. When he was about 13 his mother came home, and with the help of director Martin Frič they found a home in Prague 4 Hodkovičky.

After primary school in Karlovy Vary he attended the Jan Neruda Grammar School (Gymnázium Jana Nerudy) in Prague's Malá Strana, where his classmates included Jaromír Hanzlík and Martin Štěpánek. He studied acting at the Theatre Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (DAMU) and graduated in 1969, holding the Mgr. degree.

His first engagement after DAMU was at the theatre in Hradec Králové (then the Divadlo Vítězného února, today the Klicpera Theatre), where he spent three seasons. In the early 1970s he moved to the State Theatre in Brno, and in 1975 he became a permanent member of the drama company of the National Theatre in Prague, with which he spent most of his working life.

At the National Theatre he created close to a hundred characters. His roles included Petruccio and later Grumio in The Taming of the Shrew, Václav and Filip Dubský in Naši furianti, Francek and Vávra in Maryša, Martin Kabát in Hrátky s čertem, Švanda in Strakonický dudák, Lysander in A Midsummer Night's Dream, the Duke of Cornwall in King Lear, Stavrogin in Demons, Lazar in Markéta Lazarová, Lord Hastings in Richard III, Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, Ragueneau in Cyrano de Bergerac, Radovid in Radúz a Mahulena, Jason in Medea and Leoš Janáček in Listy důvěrné. He also appeared in productions of The Life of Galileo and Vassa. His Raymond in Blackbird, staged at the Kolowrat Theatre, won the Thalia Award in 2010.

He first appeared before the camera at 14 in Tažní ptáci (1961), and went on to films such as Škola hříšníků, Kočky neberem, Slasti Otce vlasti, Hněv, Hra o královnu, Pasáček z doliny, Jak básníci přicházejí o iluze, Oběti a vrazi, Když chcípne pes, PF 77 and Ve stínu (In the Shadow, 2012), David Ondříček's 1950s thriller in which he played a secret police colonel. His last screen work included Samhain (2024) and Fichtelberg (2025).

On television he starred as Klement Gottwald in the five-part series Gottwald (1986). He later said the controversial production taught him to refuse roles, and he went to the camera test for it straight from his mother's funeral. He was also seen in Muž na radnici, Zákony pohybu, Okres na severu, My všichni školou povinní, Synové a dcery Jakuba skláře, Chlapci a chlapi, Ordinace v růžové zahradě, Bazén, Vyprávěj (as Radek Krása), Expozitura, Terapie, Modrý kód and Sestřičky.

Štěpnička was one of the leading voices of Czech dubbing. He was the regular Czech voice of Harrison Ford, including Indiana Jones in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and Han Solo in Star Wars: The Force Awakens and The Rise of Skywalker. He also dubbed Michael Douglas (Basic Instinct, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps), Steven Seagal, Sam Neill as Dr Alan Grant in the Jurassic Park films, Gérard Depardieu as Obelix, George Clooney, William Hurt as Thaddeus Ross in the Marvel films, Bill Murray as Peter Venkman, Kurt Russell, Christoph Waltz, Robert Redford and Jeff Bridges, as well as Neil Dudgeon. He won the František Filipovský Award in 2002 for dubbing Mel Gibson in What Women Want, and in 2023 the Actors' Association honoured him for lifelong mastery in dubbing. He often said in interviews that not every actor who acts well can also dub.

Because colleagues had called him Štěpnička since drama school, he long signed contracts as Jiří Samec-Štěpnička. After the Velvet Revolution his daughter, who trained in law, told him the double name was not legal, and he formally changed his surname to Štěpnička through the registry office, a process a lawyer friend took two and a half months to complete.

He was married to Jana Říhová, who kept her maiden name, so their son Jakub and daughter Judita are named Říha and Říhová. Jana died in 2022, and he spoke publicly about being newly widowed after knowing her for more than fifty years. In interviews in his final years he also spoke frankly about a strained relationship with his son. He later lived outside Prague.

He spoke openly about the persecution of his mother under the communist regime and about his own childhood after her arrest, especially when the television film Past (The Trap, 2020) brought her story back into public discussion. He said that playing Gottwald in the 1986 series taught him to turn down roles, and in conversations about dubbing he defended it as a distinct craft that requires more than good acting.

The National Theatre described him as an exceptional acting personality who fundamentally enriched its history, and his close to a hundred roles there span half a century of the company's repertoire. For a wider public he remains the Czech voice of Harrison Ford and of many other Hollywood stars. His own life, from a London birth with Jan Masaryk as godfather to a childhood marked by his mother's imprisonment, has been widely seen in the Czech Republic as a mirror of the country's twentieth century history.

2002: František Filipovský Award for dubbing (Mel Gibson in What Women Want). 2010: Thalia Award for drama, for Raymond in Blackbird. 2023: Actors' Association (Herecká asociace) award for lifelong mastery in dubbing. 2024: Master Prix of the Život umělce foundation.

Jiří Štěpnička died on Sunday 11 October 2026 at the age of 79. The National Theatre announced his death that day, with spokesman Tomáš Staněk citing the family. The place and cause of death were not made public. General director Jan Burian said that a friend and an outstanding actor had gone, whose fate was an image of the country's turbulent history.