Milena Zupančič

Milena Zupančič was born on 18 December 1946 in Jesenice, in what was then Yugoslavia and is now Slovenia. She was raised by her mother, Elizabeta Zupančič, known as Betka, who brought up three daughters alone. Milena never knew her father.

She grew up in Bohinjska Bela near Bled, attending the local branch of the Bled primary school, and later the gymnasium in Jesenice. She liked to recall that as a child she was constantly performing around the house, and by her teens she knew she wanted to be an actress. She went on to study at the Academy for Theatre in Ljubljana, where she said her drama teacher Vida Juvan taught her never to admit that there was something she could not do.

Zupančič made her screen debut in the late 1960s and became widely known through two films by Matjaž Klopčič: Cvetje v jeseni (Blossoms in Autumn, 1973), in which she played Meta, and Vdovstvo Karoline Žašler (The Widowhood of Karolina Žašler, 1976). She won the Golden Arena for Best Actress at the Pula Film Festival in 1976 and 1977.

Over the following decades she appeared in films such as Idealist (1976), Novinar (1979), Iskanja (1979), Christophoros (1985), Moj ata, socialistični kulak (1987), Ljubezen po kranjsko (1991), Felix (1996), Warchild (2005) and Srečen za umret (2013), as well as many television productions. In all she played more than 80 film and television roles.

She was a leading member of the ensemble of the Slovenian National Theatre Drama in Ljubljana, where she played more than 120 stage roles. She said she had been lucky enough to play practically the entire leading female repertoire, from Shakespeare to new Slovenian plays; her one unfulfilled wish was to play Richard III. In later years her roles included the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet, Oriane in an adaptation of Proust's In Search of Lost Time and the Mother in Thomas Bernhard's Am Ziel. In 2022 she received the Serbian Tatjana Lukjanova theatre award for her role as Sonja in Cement Beograd.

Alongside her acting, she was a UNICEF ambassador from 2000 and regional ambassador for the Western Balkans from November 2003, ending the role in 2011. She formally retired in 2011 but continued to perform.

From 1973 to 1977 Zupančič was married to the actor Radko Polič. She later married the playwright, director and writer Dušan Jovanović, with whom she had a daughter, Maša. They remained together until his death in 2021. She once said she regretted not having more children, having grown up with two sisters. She stayed closely attached to Bohinjska Bela throughout her life and was made an honorary citizen of the municipality of Bled in 2018 and of Ljubljana in 2025.

Milena Zupančič died on 15 August 2026, aged 79, after a long illness. RTV Slovenija first reported her death, and the news agency STA and other outlets followed. She had been ill for several years but continued to act whenever she was strong enough.

The Slovenian government said she had left an indelible mark on Slovenian culture, and the Ministry of Culture recalled the citation for her Prešeren Award. Colleagues from across the former Yugoslavia paid tribute.

As a holder of the Golden Order for Merits, she was given a state funeral with military honours at Bohinjska Bela on 19 August 2026. She was buried beside her mother and near the grave of her husband Dušan Jovanović. The mayor of Bled, Anton Mežan, called her an ambassador of Bled, Bohinjska Bela and culture.

Zupančič is remembered as one of the defining figures of Slovenian theatre and film. Her role as Meta in Cvetje v jeseni remains one of the best loved performances in Slovenian cinema. She was the subject of a monograph published by the Ljubljana Drama in 2012, a biography by Tadej Golob, Kot bi Luna padla na zemljo (2018), and a film monograph by Majda Širca published in 2026.