He was wonderful and Stu (Sutcliffe) liked him, better than Jim Dean, they say! He died in 1967, at the age of 40, when he was already a brightly shining star of the Polish arty cinema. Grim as he was, he also had an alcoholic problem. His teenage years were crushed by wartime and he had to start his studies late. The first smashing hit in which he starred was 'The Ash And The Diamond' directed by our best filmmaker, Adrew Wajda, in 1958.

From then on he quickly became by far the only Polish teenage idol, as we had no rock and roll and jazz music ruled until about 1964, when the future "Polish Beatles" started their career in a port town called Gdańsk,


(Here's what it looks like today)

where Zbyszek had begun his theatrical experiences back in the early 50s, with the student theatre 'Bim Bom,' co-founded with his friends. One of them, Bogumił Kobiela, had also fame awaiting him in near future, but thanks to his roles in comedies, while Zbyszek did not generally play in anything but dramas or black comedies at least. Well, with the exception of 'Giuseppe In Warsaw,' a comedy about an Italian soldier Giuseppe who meets a girl of the Polish underground army and ends up living in her flat in wartime Warsaw ocuppied by the nazis. Zbyszek plays the girl's brother, a painter, who is extremely annoyed with the conditions in which he's got to work, and, of course, the 'Italiano,' whom he can't stand at all. It is brilliant when the girl shuts them both up in the bathroom when her friends from the army come to a secret meeting. I encourage everybody to see it, no moralizing usually connected to war subjects guarranteed.

His other great roles were in 'The Eighth Day Of The Week' (based on a story by Marek Hłasko -read about him at my other page Marek Hłasko -1958),'The Train' (1959), 'The Criminal And The Maiden' (1963), 'The Manuscript Found In Saragossa' (1964), 'Salto' (1965)...

After he died (when trying to jump on to a running train, which he used to do so many times before), Wajda made a special film dedicated to him, with many realistic elements of his life, but on the whole made up, which had its great part in building his myth. The movie was entitled 'Everything For Sell' and was released in 1969, with many of our best actors starring, including Andrew Łapicki, Elizabeth Czyżewska, Beata Tyszkiewicz, Daniel Olbrychski and Bogumił Kobiela.

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