Lidija Vukićević is a Serbian film and TV actress and politician. From 2004 until 2012, she was also politically involved with the Serbian Radical Party, serving as their MP in the Serbian parliament from 2007 until 2012.
Acting career
Best known for playing Violeta, daughter of the central Popadić family on the hugely popular Bolji životsoap opera, Vukićević's acting career peaked throughout the mid-to-late 1980s and early 1990s. She originates from the Vasojevićiclan. Her career in movies was launched in 1985 when she got cast in Žikina dinastija, the seventh installment of the popular folksy comedy film series Lude godine. Being 22 at the time, Vukićević played the role of sexy housemaid Lilika. This exposure led to similar roles in other movies of the same genre such as Špijun na štiklama and Vampiri su među nama. In all of these movies she was mostly typecast as a y sexpot.
Political career
In 2004, Vukićević joined the opposition Serbian Radical Party, a political organization whose leader Vojislav Šešelj had already been detained in The Hague for over a year, awaiting trial at the international criminal tribunal. In his absence, the party that won 27.62% of the popular vote at the latest parliamentary election and held 82 seats, more than any other individual party in Serbia at the time, was led by its high-ranking officials Tomislav Nikolić, Aleksandar Vučić, and Dragan Todorović. Vukićević became the party's MP in 2007 following the parliamentary elections. The following year, in September 2008, when the SRS went through a bitter split with many of its members including top-ranking officials Nikolić and Vučić left to form the Serbian Progressive Party, Vukićević decided to stay loyal to the SRS. Along with a significant number of prominent party members, she left the SRS following the 2012 elections where it won only 4.62% of the popular vote, below the 5% threshold, meaning it failed to obtain any parliamentary seats. Reportedly, Šešelj's personnel decisions following the election fiasco, such as naming Vjerica Radeta as the new party vice-president, precipitated the mass exodus from the SRS.
