Roma Gąsiorowska, the Ki star who now plays Polish cinema’s mothers and trains its actors

Roma Gąsiorowska

Photo: Fryta 73 / CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Born	November 18, 1981 Bydgoszcz, Poland
Occupation	Actress
Known for	Suicide Room, The Lure, Letters to Santa
Awards	Best Actress, Gdynia Polish Film Festival · Złota Kaczka · Złoty Szczeniak, Tadeusz Szymków Film Acting Festival · Grand Prix, Kalisz Theatre Meetings

Kinga, the young Warsaw mother at the centre of Ki, refuses to become the tired, disappointed single mother everyone expects, and she leans on whoever is nearest to keep her fast, loud life going. Roma Gąsiorowska played her without once asking the audience to forgive her, and the performance won her the best actress award at Gdynia, the festival where Polish cinema hands out its main prizes. What she did after that win is the more interesting story. She never settled into the arthouse lead she seemed made for. Her energy went to Christmas comedies, the stage, a fashion label and an acting school, and the career that came out of it does not fit under one heading.

The habit started early. Gąsiorowska grew up in Bydgoszcz, and while at the city’s First Secondary School she and a group of friends set up an amateur theatre circle of their own. She got into the drama school in Kraków, the PWST, on her second attempt. Her diploma show, Marius von Mayenburg’s Zimne dziecko, directed by Jan Peszek, earned her the young actor’s prize at the Kalisz Theatre Meetings.

Before she had even finished her degree, Warsaw had claimed her. TR Warszawa took her into its Teren Warszawa project, and she was one of two actresses from that group offered a permanent contract; the Stary Theatre in Kraków made an offer too. She stayed with TR until 2017 and built more than twenty roles there for directors such as Grzegorz Jarzyna, René Pollesch and Kornél Mundruczó. Mundruczó’s Nietoperz, a reworking of Strauss’s Die Fledermaus, brought her the Grand Prix at Kalisz in 2013.

Her first film role was a supporting part in Jerzy Stuhr’s Pogoda na jutro in 2003. Small roles followed for Andrzej Wajda in Sweet Rush and for Xawery Żuławski in Snow White and Russian Red, along with television work in Pitbull and Londyńczycy. Then 2011 gave her two films that defined her. In Jan Komasa’s Suicide Room she was Sylwia, the pink-haired girl who draws a lonely teenager into an online world he cannot leave, a role that won her the Złoty Szczeniak at the Wrocław film acting festival. In Leszek Dawid’s Ki she carried the film alone. Alongside the Gdynia award it brought her the Złota Kaczka from Film magazine, and both performances were nominated for the Orzeł, the Polish Film Award. Writing in Polityka, Aneta Kyzioł called Ki one of the most interesting and realistic portraits of a young woman in recent Polish cinema.

The reading that followed was less generous, and it has some truth in it. Filmweb’s critic, praising Ki, noted that the role did not stray far from the types she had already been cast in: the restless, unruly young woman. The industry seemed to agree, and it kept hiring that persona rather than testing her range. The same year she played Doris in Letters to Santa, a Christmas ensemble comedy she would return to more than once. In 2012 came Kac Wawa, which the Węże, Poland’s answer to the Razzies, named the worst film of the year. Her outside projects multiplied in the same years. She launched the clothing label Natinaf, which earned her a nomination at the Róża Gali awards for her debut in fashion, and she opened a school.

The school turned out to be the steadier investment. Gąsiorowska founded AktoRstudio in 2012 and has run it since, with courses for children and adults alike. When Agnieszka Smoczyńska made The Lure, a mermaid horror musical that went on to screen at Sundance, it was AktoRstudio that prepared the actresses playing the two leads, while Gąsiorowska took the supporting role of Rakieta. In 2017 she co-directed and co-produced Płyń, a music-theatre piece with text and music by Piotr Rogucki, and also worked on its sets and costumes. With Sylwia Stano she wrote Całe szczęście jestem kobietą, a book of conversations with ten women, published by Agora in 2019. FilmPolski also credits her as acting coach on the family film Za duży na bajki 3.

Her screen roles, meanwhile, have changed register. She played Zula Pogorzelska, a star of interwar cabaret, in Bodo, and appeared in Kinga Dębska’s Plan B. In the Canal+ series Belfer she was police commissioner Ewa Krawiec, first in 2016 and again in the third season. Netflix brought her a wider audience. In Lesson Plan, a thriller set in a school, she played Ela Makowiecka. Robert Wichrowski’s Tonight You’re Sleeping with Me, released in March 2023, gave her the lead as Nina, a journalist torn between a distant husband and a younger ex-boyfriend. Reviews of the film were cool. In Bartek Bala’s Rój she is the mother of a family kept on a remote island by its patriarch, and she also sings in the choir on the score. She played Joanna Wencel in the Viaplay crime series Morderczynie, Doris again in the 2024 instalment of Letters to Santa, and Klimasowa in Władysław Pasikowski’s thriller Operation Pope in 2025.

Gąsiorowska, who was born in Bydgoszcz on 18 November 1981, married the actor Michał Żurawski in 2010, and they have two children. In 2024 she confirmed publicly that they were divorcing, and reports in 2026 said the proceedings were still before the court. In 2020 the Tofifest festival in Toruń gave her its Flisak award for promoting her home region of Kuyavia-Pomerania.

Her next film reverses the role that made her name. In Fluidy, Maria Wider’s feature debut, which competed in the main section of the Gdynia festival in September 2026, she plays Iwona, a mother who takes a job in the United States and sends her two children to spend the summer in Masuria with their long-estranged father. A cinema release is planned for 2027. Fifteen years after Gdynia rewarded her for playing the mother nobody could count on, she returns there as the one who leaves.