Jakub Gierszał
Jakub Gierszał is an actor, born 1988.
Born in Kraków, moved to Hamburg as an infant when his father's theatre work took the family to Germany, and back to Poland eleven years later. Gierszał made his screen debut in 2009 in All That I Love, which is not among the credits listed here, and two years later took the role that still defines him: Dominik in Suicide Room, a wealthy teenager whose life collapses inward into an online world. He has three Polish Film Awards nominations.
What he does well is privilege with something wrong underneath it. He looks like the well-brought-up son every Polish drama needs one of, and he keeps using that surface as a lid on something unstable, which is why casting directors hand him the same species of young man from a good family over and over. The Lure, a mermaid horror musical with an eccentric reputation it entirely deserves, uses him differently, as the ordinary object of an extremely strange desire, and it remains the oddest thing on his list.
The recent career is built on returns. He played Piotr Langer jr in The Defence and again in Langer, and Leopold Bilski in Colors of Evil: Red and Colors of Evil: Black, which is two separate multi-part crime franchises carrying his face. Dracula Untold was the brief Hollywood detour, Breaking the Limits a change of register as Jerzy Górski, and Gorky Resort is next.
Movies (7)
TV (2)
Where to start with Jakub Gierszał
Suicide Room is the necessary one. A difficult, sometimes overwrought film about a teenager retreating into an online world, and his performance is what keeps it from turning into a lecture; go in knowing the subject matter is heavy. Then The Lure for the complete opposite, a Polish mermaid musical set in a nightclub, gory and glittering and unlike anything else you will see this year. Colors of Evil: Red is the accessible modern entry, a slick Netflix crime picture, with Colors of Evil: Black continuing the same character. The Defence is the better series and the one to pick if you want him in something with room to breathe, and Langer carries it on. Dracula Untold is a small part in a big film and can be skipped without loss.