Bulgarian theatre and screen actress Stoyanka Mutafova dies aged 97

Bulgaria’s Stoyanka Mutafova, nominated in 2016 to be listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s oldest working stage actress, died on December 6 2019 at the age of 97.

A legend of Bulgarian theatre and screen, Mutafova starred in more than 100 plays and 30 films.

Mutafova was born in Sofia on February 2 1922, the daughter of Konstantin Mutafov, a playwright at the Ivan Vazov National Theatre.

After completing school at the First Girl’s High School in the Bulgarian capital city in 1941, Mutafova graduated in classics from Sofia University St Kliment Ohridski, and graduated from the State Theatre School at the Ivan Vazov National Theatre, and the theatre faculty at the Academy of Arts in Prague in what was then Czechoslovakia in 1949.

From 1946 to 1949, she worked at a theatre in Prague, and from 1949 to 1956, at the Ivan Vazov National Theatre. She was one of the founders of the Aleko Konstantinov State Satirical Theatre, where she worked from 1956 to 1991, then at the Adriana Budevska Drama Theatre in Bourgas, from 1991.

At the age of 94, she toured extensively in theatres in the United States, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

She was nicknamed “Mrs Natural Disaster” for one of her best-known and most loved roles. “Mrs Natural Disaster” is also the title of a biography written about Mutafova by her daughter.

Numerous acting and state awards were conferred on Mutafova, including the St Cyril and Methodius, first degree.

Married three times, she is survived by her daughter, actress Maria Grubeshlieva.

Bulgaria’s National Assembly observed a minute of silence on December 6 in mourning for the death of actress Stoyanka Mutafova. Photo: parliament.bg

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