János Kulka (born 11 November 1958) is a Hungarian actor. He appeared in more than fifty films since 1980, and is a leading stage actor of his generation in Hungary. He received the Kossuth and Jászai Mari Prize; he is an eternal member of the Society of Immortals.
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Early life
Kulka was born in Budapest, but spent most of his childhood in Szeged, where his father, Frigyes Kulka was an internationally acclaimed surgeon. His father came from Ipolyság (currently Šahy in Slovakia), and was a Holocaust survivor, who lost his family during the war. His mother, Eszter Boleman was recruited as an anchorwoman for the first experimental television broadcasts in Hungary, but the
revolution in 1956 interrupted her career. His sister, Janina Kulka is a full professor of pathology at the Semmelweis University.
Career
He started his career as a child actor at the National Theatre of Szeged, and wanted to study liberal arts, but eventually changed his mind and was admitted to the Academy of Drama and Film in Budapest. After his graduation in 1981, he joined the National Theatre of Pécs. In 1985 he signed on to the Gergely Csiky Theatre of Kaposvár, which was a leading Hungarian theatre of the time. Kulka considers these years to have a huge impact on his way of acting, and benefitted much from this experience later in his career.