On the fourth of January 2026, 22 years have passed since the death of the inimitable Helena Růžičková († 67). The first information said that the actress breathed her last in a Pilsen hospital after a long and serious illness (she fought cancer for two years), but director Zdeněk A little (72) once for he explained that the real cause was kidney failure.
Doctors should have almost completely cured her of cancer, unfortunately, she was also troubled by problems with her lower limbs, whose solution would have to be drastic. “She knew what was wrong with her. She fought until the last moment, but she knew that the end was near. She had tumors in her that somehow disappeared, they really cured her so that only one remained and it was encapsulated,” revealed the popular director five years ago.
“However, the doctor then said that Helena died on time, because both legs were to be amputated. She said she felt great, healthy, but her legs wouldn’t obey her. I convinced her that she had to be patient, but in the end what happened happened. Apparently, she had something similar to our president, but in a much worse condition,” added Troška.
Růžičková was born Helena Málková on June 13, 1936 in Prague, Czech Republic. That she would become an artist was predicted to her father, a legionnaire in Africa, allegedly by an African shaman. She’s been like that since she was a child she was preparing for an acting career. She attended a private ballet school and danced in the ballet of the Czech National Theater in Prague and in the then German Theater in Prague.
She later graduated from the Higher Medical School and briefly worked as a dental laboratory technician. However, she continued to dream of a career on stage and the silver screen. She worked as a choreographer in Mladá Boleslav and was also a stage technician in Příbram.
Later, as a freelance actress, she was a guest at the Drama Club in Gogoľov Revízor (1967) and in the years 1971–1973 she was a member of Prague’s Theater Na zábradlí. In 1955, she married theater actor and assistant director Jiří Růžička Sr., with whom she lived until his death in 2003.
She had to resign from her career as a ballerina after gaining a lot of weight, but she was able to make her corpulent figure one of the basic attributes of her brilliant acting, especially in comedic roles. Helena Růžičková has loved movies since she was a child. As a four-year-old, she starred in the film Grandma (1940) and shortly after that in the comedy Z české mlýnů (1941).
She was permanently etched in the memory of the audience with her performances in cult films Hogo fogo Homolka, Homolka and Podolka, How about some spinach, Lord, you’re a widow!, Women in the offside, We’ll spin it tomorrow, dear…! or She tore violets with dynamite. Her character Škopkova from the trilogy directed by Zdenek Troška Slunce, seno, … remains unforgettable. She also acted in well-known fairy tales such as John the Little King, Three Nuts for Cinderella or About Princess Jasněnka and the Flying Shoemaker.
The cast actress wrote several books – cookbooks, autobiographies and a book about her optimistic struggle with an insidious disease. She was interested in several esoteric disciplines and it was publicly known that she had a gift of divination, for which she was even sought after by her acting colleagues. She predicted the future for free according to the motto “gifts should only be given again”.
In 1991, she became a co-founder of the Slon Foundation to help children from the orphanage in Šarišské Michaľany in eastern Slovakia. She suffered from cancer in the last years of her life, she began to give up her fight after the death of her husband and son Jiří Růžička Jr. (1999), who was also an actor.
