Joanna Pacuła


Joanna Pacuła is a Polish-American actress and model. Born in Tomaszów Lubelski and emigrating to the United States in the early 1980s, she first gained prominence through her modeling work for Vogue. Her breakthrough performance in the 1983 film Gorky Park earned her a Golden Globe nomination for New Star of the Year – Actress. In the years since, she established herself as a prolific character actress, appearing in numerous high-profile films and television series.

Life and career

Pacuła was born in Tomaszów Lubelski, Poland, to a pharmacist mother and an engineer father. She has a sister, Ewa Pacuła, a model and TV personality who has also worked in the United States.
In 1979, Pacuła graduated from the Aleksander Zelwerowicz State Theatre Academy. After graduation, she joined the Warsaw Dramatic Theatre, where she acted until 1981. She began her career playing in productions of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Othello, and As You Like It. She also found work in a few films, including Krzysztof Zanussi's Camouflage and Sergiu Nicolaescu's Last Night of Love in Romania.
In 1981, Pacuła was in Paris when the communist authorities in Poland declared martial law. She did not return to her homeland, and in 1982 emigrated to the United States, where she specialized in playing European temptresses, since her feature debut opposite William Hurt in Gorky Park. She was praised by Roman Polanski for that role. She played in numerous American TV series and movies, including the Holocaust drama Escape From Sobibor, The Kiss, E.A.R.T.H. Force, and the TV series, The Colony. She also starred in Lewis Gilbert's Not Quite Jerusalem released in 1984.
She was featured in Marked for Death as an expert on Jamaican voodoo and gangs; in the Italian erotic thriller Husband and Lovers as a free-spirited adultress; Tombstone as Doc Holliday's lover, Kate ; in The Haunted Sea ; and in the film Virus, playing a Russian scientist. She currently resides in Southern California.

Milestones

Film
Television