Olbrychski was 16 when he made his first public appearance in a TV poetry programme.
At 19, in his first year at the Warsaw Drama School, director Andrzej Wajda picked him for the lead in the screen adaptation of Polish writer Stefan Żeromski’s novel The Ashes.
The film was shown at the Cannes Festival, skyrocketing Olbrychski to stardom, with more leads in Wajda masterpieces such as The Wedding and The Promised Land, as well as in films by other prominent Polish and foreign directors, including Krzysztof Zanussi, Jerzy Hoffman, Volker Schlöndorff, Miklós Jancsó and Claude Lelouch.
Asked whether the role in Wajda’s The Ashes shaped him as an actor, Olbrychski said in an interview for Poland's PAP news agency that he would not call himself a fully-shaped actor even today.
“Every new role is some sort of a debut for me,” he said, citing last month’s premiere in a Warsaw theatre of Rosa et Abrasza by Belgian playwright Serge Kribus, a two-hander in which Olbrychski was partnered by Polish actress Jadwiga Jankowska-Cieślak.
In his long career, Olbrychski has appeared alongside international cinema stars such as Burt Lancaster, Simone Signoret, Michel Piccoli, Isabelle Hupert, Marina Vlady, Leslie Caron and Angelina Jolie.
Five of his films were nominated for an Oscar in the best foreign film category and one of them, Schlöndorff’s The Tin Drum, won the Golden Palm at the Cannes Festival.
For many years, Olbrychski maintained close contacts with Russian filmmakers, notably Nikita Mikhalkov.
“After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, we parted ways," Olbrychski said. "Mikhalkov is a staunch supporter of his president. I wrote an open letter to him and his elder brother Andrei Konchalovsky but had no response. This is all very painful for me."
He added that he happened to be working in Moscow at the time of Russia’s capture of Ukraine's Crimea peninsula in 2014.
"I terminated the contract and sent back the fee that I had received," he said.
Olbrychski has also enjoyed a successful career in theatre and TV drama, being one of the favourite actors of the late director Adam Hanuszkiewicz.
In 1970, he played Hamlet in Hanuszkiewicz’s production of William Shakespeare's play at the National Theatre in Warsaw.
Olbrychski’s distinctions include the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Reborn Poland, the French Legion of Honour, and the German Order of Merit.
(mk/gs)