Mira Furlan

Mira Furlan — Biography

Born in Zagreb on 7 September 1955, Mira Furlan spent decades as a Croatian-American stage, film and television performer and singer, coming up through the former Yugoslavia’s national theatre scene. She first drew wide notice for Emir Kusturica’s Cannes-winning drama When Father Was Away on Business and won the Golden Arena for acting twice at the Pula Film Festival. After Yugoslavia descended into war in the early 1990s, she left, unhappy with the country’s political climate, and settled in the United States; the move triggered a fierce backlash at home, where she was branded a national traitor and had her Zagreb apartment seized, a dispute she fought in court for seventeen years before winning it back. In America she became widely recognized for playing Ambassador Delenn on the science-fiction series Babylon 5 and Danielle Rousseau on Lost, and also appeared in films such as Cirkus Columbia and The Abandoned. In 2010 she published a collection of essays. Furlan died in Los Angeles on 20 January 2021 at age 65.