She rose to fame thanks to her lead in Nights and Days, a 1975 Polish film which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and was showered with a host of awards at international festivals.
Her portrayal of Barbara Niechcic in the film won Barańska the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the Berlin Film Festival and the Golden Lion at the Polish Film Festival.
Directed by Jerzy Antczak, Barańska’s husband, Nights and Days is an epic family saga based on the novel with the same title by Polish writer Maria Dąbrowska (1889-1965).
In a nationwide poll in 2015, Barańska was named Poland’s most popular actress and Nights and Days the best feature film of the post-war period.
In addition to her work in films and the theatre, Barańska wrote scripts, including to Antczak’s last two films, The Lady of the Camellias after Alexandre Dumas and Chopin. A Desire for Love.
In 1979, Barańska emigrated to the United States, where her husband worked for many years as a professor of film and TV direction at the University of California, Los Angeles.
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