I’m glad I finally got to do what I always wanted to do
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Alois Švehlík was born on 30 July 1939 in Pardubice. His parents came from Moravia and led their children to faith. Together they attended Salesian masses, where Alois and his older brother got their first taste of the theatre. At the end of the war, the family experienced three air raids on Pardubice. After the communists came to power, Alois’s father lost the shop he ran and, after the currency reform, most of his savings. After that, his parents found it difficult to find any kind of employment. Because of his bourgeois background, the communists let Alois Švehlik study only at the mechanical engineering school in Chrudim, which he never wanted to do. He finished his studies with difficulty and worked briefly in a mill machinery factory in Pardubice, where he met his future wife Florentina. They married after Alois’ military service in 1967 and had three children. He tried unsuccessfully to pass the entrance exams for acting, so he started working as an entrant in a theatre in Klatovy, later he played in Most, Olomouc or Liberec. Here he also experienced the occupation by the Warsaw Pact troops in August 1968, when tanks rumbled in front of the Liberec theatre. In 1974 he came to Prague, where he started at the ABC Theatre and worked his way up to the National Theatre drama. Since theatre salaries were not large, he also dabbled in dubbing, moderated on radio and acted in several television productions and films. He remembers the Velvet Revolution with pleasure and appreciates the fact that our first post-Soviet president Václav Havel was also his good friend. He was active in his profession until the end of his life. He died on April 2, 2025.
