Mira Furlan - Autobiography

I was born in Zagreb (the former Yugoslavia, now Croatia). My father is a psychologist, and used to teach child psychology at the University of Zagreb. He made his Ph.D. in the development of children's speech and used me as his "rabbit" when I was a child. Actually, he based his dissertation (which was later published as a book) on my mother's diary about me, which she had written from the moment I was born until my third year. My father is the author of numerous other books on psychology and pedagogical subjects. He has also translated many books on psychology into Serbo-Croatian from English and Russian (he is also a professor of English). My father is now retired, living in a log cabin in the mountains that he built himself, and is writing fiction. In his free time he is a passionate carpenter and builder - unfortunately I didn't inherit any of that interest or talent! That is his way of dealing with this ugly war, total seclusion, nature, books, writing, and a lot of physical work (carpentry gardening). Sometimes I envy him.

My mother died many years ago when I was still very young, and I will never recover from that. She was a professor of French and Yugoslav literature, but worked all her life as a librarian. Her specialty was children's books. My mother was very successful; she had invented a new way of cataloging books, and just as she became ill, received an offer to work in the U.S. Library of Congress. She was a member of all significant international juries for the best children's books, and my apartment in Zagreb is still full of those incredible, beautiful books from all over the world. My mother was the main traveler in our house and was often abroad organizing children's departments in libraries all over Europe. Sometimes she would stay there for a couple of months, which was always very sad for me when I was a child. I had a spiritual and emotional bond with my mother that no physical absence, not even the final one, could disrupt. She is a part of my life in a very intense way and I feel it now, in my new American life, more than ever. If I have any talent, emotional depth, passion, or capacity for love, it definitely comes from her. My mother was an extraordinary woman who knew pain and loss from the very beginning of her life, and I can certainly feel traces of that basic feeling about life in myself.

I also had a grandmother with whom I spent most of my childhood and younger years. She was an exceptional person, a scholar, a translator, a linguist, and a professor of French and Yugoslav literature at the so called Classical high school in Zagreb (where Latin and Greek were the main languages). She co-translated Proust's Remembrance of Things Past with the greatest Croatian poet, Tin Ujevic, and received a "Legion d'Honneur" medal from the French Government. At a time and place when women were generally locked in their houses and forbidden to take part in the social and professional life, my grandmother studied and made her Ph.D. in French literature at the Sorbonne, in Paris. She was my angel, she taught me everything I know. She gave me the basic knowledge of languages, taught me how to think linguistically, and how to understand the language as such. She belonged to the breed of Central European intellectuals who spoke at least five languages, were educated in a vast area of different subjects, and who held an interest in the arts and culture above all. Due to the absolute victory of money as the main value in today's world, that valuable species of mankind has vanished, almost entirely.

I was brought up in this atmosphere of books, arts, and languages (my grandmother spoke with me in German when I was a baby, and later taught me the basics of French). My mother was a great theatre enthusiast and we had gone to see plays since I was a tiny child. I would always get so involved with what was going on at the stage, that my mother would often be very embarrassed, having this child beside her that was crying, laughing, climbing on stage, trying to warn the good guys of the bad guys, etc.

I went to a language oriented high school, where English was the primary language. I am really grateful to my parents for that, because that knowledge is now enabling me to work here. I was traveling a lot throughout Europe when I was very young (when I was fourteen my parents sent me to an English course at an international camp in England, that was the beginning of my love for traveling). At my high school there was a young English professor who had just finished Oxford and came to teach at the University of Zagreb, as well as our high school. He taught English literature through Bob Dylan's songs (among other poets) and opened my eyes in many aspects. For a whole year we were rehearsing an English play (in English), John Arden's Live Like Pigs (I played the tough whore, Daffodil), and when we finally "opened" (we did it only once), in those moments when I entered the stage, trembling with stage fright and excitement, under those spotlights, I felt that I'd found the one thing that I wanted to do in my life. Nothing could match that flow of adrenaline. That was it. I did not say anything to anybody. My mother was the only one who knew that I wanted to try to do the entering exam at the Academy for Theatre, Film, and TV in Zagreb, but even she didn't take it seriously, and neither did I. Acting was fun, but shouldn't I do something "serious?" Languages were always easy and fun for me as well so I did both: I enrolled into the University (English and French), and into the Academy. For two years I did both things, running around like crazy, not sleeping, not eating. When I was in my second year at the Academy, I began to get my first acting jobs. I played a young girl (I cannot even remember the name of the character) in Priestly's An Inspector Calls (which was recently a hit on Broadway) and I got the lead role of a junkie girl who dies of a heroin overdose in a TV movie. In the fourth year of my studies I got the lead in my first TV series, Velo Misto ("The Little Big Town"). I played a tough, independent woman who lived sometime between the First and Second World War and who was constantly having fights with her weak husband. People, especially women, loved both the series and my character. I became popular throughout Yugoslavia and became a member of the Croatian National Theatre, where I played major parts of the world's dramatic literature. I also performed regularly at the Dubrovnik Summer Festival (Ophelia in Hamlet and major Yugoslav classics). It was over with my language studies, I surrendered myself to the new course of my life.

My first film job came after I did a lot of significant roles in the theatre. I played the sensual lover of the hero in the movie (it was an adaptation of a great novel of our literature, Cyclops). The film was a whole new experience for me, I worked with the best Yugoslav actors and I received the highest film award in our country for it, a Golden Arena for The Best Supporting Actress, at the annual film festival in Pula. My film career thus began.

I played in all kinds of movies all over the country. I was lucky to work with the A-league of Yugoslav actors and directors, among them was Emir Kusturica, whose film When Father Was Away On Business got a Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival, and an Oscar nomination. The Yugoslav film industry, however, could be compared to the lowest budget guerrilla movie making in this country. There was never any money for anything, there were no trailers, no SAG rules to protect the actors, we only had talent, enthusiasm and good will. Sometimes it was painful and frustrating, and sometimes it was artistically fulfilling and you were willing to forget all the abuse, waiting, cold weather, and the lack of any financial rewards. There were some amazing actors around, actors who could stand on any stage or set in the world, but never will. Some of the best things in art are hidden in the dark corners of this world and will never be discovered. That always made me sad, and still does. I received my second Golden Arena, this time for The Best Actress, for an interesting movie that was distributed in Germany, France, Belgium, and Israel, called The Beauty of Vice, in which I played a peasant woman from the mountains who finds work in a tourist resort and discovers the beauty and danger of "civilization", whatever that may be.

I never broke up with the theatre and I'm still not willing to, even though theatre in this country is marginal and unfortunately doesn't affect an actor's career. So, while traveling all over the country and shooting movies, I stayed a member of the Croatian National Theatre and continued playing some interesting roles. At the time of my second Golden Arena I was also singing in a band, for fun only. During a gig (I sang old American rock 'n roll like the Ronnettes etc. e.g., Be My Baby) a talented and charming young director came to do a video of the song. The video was never made for reasons I cannot remember, but I met the man I had been dreaming of all my life.

Goran was studying film in Belgrade at the time, so I moved to Belgrade with him coming occasionally to my hometown of Zagreb in order to do a play in my theatre, a TV film, or a movie. I began acting in the Belgrade theatre, did a beautiful Jewish play, Dybbuk and later Corneille's Theatrical Illusion. I played in Zagreb as well, doing Turgenev's A Month in the Country and Shaw's Devil's Disciple. I was given the highest Croatian theatre award for Turgenev. Goran worked a lot, directing videos for Yugoslav rock 'n roll bands and shooting his first movies. The comedy The Fall of Rock 'n Roll became a hit with the younger Yugoslav audience and got distribution in Europe. But, none of that mattered anymore.... nationalism was on the rise and elements of fascism were appearing everywhere. We did not know, or did not want to know, that the next step would be war.

I performed in two different plays in Zagreb and Belgrade at the same time. In times of peace the commute was a three hour trip by car, and Goran and I were doing it a couple of times a week. But, the two cities were growing further apart every day. The war propaganda was in full gear. Hatred of unbelievable proportions installed itself inside the people. Or had it always been there? We could not understand it. We still thought it was all madness and could not imagine that stupidity would win on such a large scale. We were wrong. While the two cities in which we lived and worked were becoming the capitals of the new independent states, and while all communication between them, including telephone lines, was being shut down, I was still commuting and trying to reach my theatres by 7:30 p.m. The trip that used to be three hours long became an adventure of unpredictable length and result. Still, it seemed the only sane and honorable thing to do: to continue the communication, defy the notion that all the "others" were beasts and monsters, and to act for both audiences that knew and loved me. But people are opportunistic by nature and the new states were totalitarian in their essence and punished everyone who dared to doubt the Great National Cause. We saw our colleagues, actors and directors on both sides, taking up uniforms and guns, and reciting nationalistic poems for the soldiers of the new armies. I wrote a public statement in the Croatian and Serbian papers saying that I was refusing to take part in the hatred and that I believed in art as a bond between people. An avalanche of insults and attacks appeared in the Croatian media, followed by an attempt of the Serbian media to use "the case" as an example of Croatian fascism. I became a symbol, my identity was lost, as was the identity of millions of other people who ceased to be individual human beings, and became "Serbs", "Croats", or "Muslims" and therefore hated, expelled, or killed. I understood that I could not be an actor any more, not even an honorable human being, by staying there. The idea of leaving had been in our minds for a long time before the actual war began. While Goran was finishing his movie Dear Video, I stopped performing altogether and even stopped going out of my house. I felt sick with disgust all the time. We felt defeated and betrayed, and we still do. We finally left in November of 1991. Our destination was New York City, my favorite city in the world. We didn't know what was ahead of us. Who could have thought that a space station where aliens and humans are trying to achieve peace and balance would be my destiny? But then, isn't there some strange logic in it after all?