Tragically, the Hungarian actress, whose voice a country fell in love with, passed away at the young age of 49

Our beautiful, elegant actress with a wonderfully unique voice, Nóra Káldi, would be 80 years old already.

In the mid-1980s, he said: although it doesn’t fit, he is still an optimist. He wished himself a healthy, long, harmonious life. He planned that when he gets old and his children keep their promise, he will live with his 5-6 grandchildren in his mother’s house in Szentendre, where there is silence, sunlight and lots of greenery. But in the end, he was not given even 50 years – but he spent nearly 30 of them on stage.

He worked for his luck

He studied at Pálné Veres High School, just like Lili Darvas, whose younger self he played in Károly Makk’s film Szerelem. He attended Zoltán Várkonyi’s class at the Academy of Fine Arts, and one of his teachers was the goddess Mária Sulyok, who remained in his eyes. The legendary actress told her during a vacation in Zamárd: “My sweet girl, this is the path va banque.” And indeed, he also experienced that acting requires at least as much luck as talent.

Nóra Káldi in the Hungarian Radio studio in 1974 – photo: Fortepan / Zoltán Szalay

Of course, you can get ahead of your luck, but everyone can only do it in their own way. Nóra thought that it was necessary to work well and intensively in the role that was given to her, and then she did everything she could. According to his son, he was a struggling type, both in his private life and in his profession. He loved to rehearse and play. After 13 years as a member of Madách – to which director Ottó Ádám personally invited him after seeing Garcia Lorca’s play Vérnász in Szolnok – he signed a contract with the József Attila Theater.

Among his films, Péter Bacsó’s movie Lovers of Bicycles, which he filmed while still in college, and such once popular TV series as Bors, Vivat Benyovszky! and Kémeri. She lent her unmistakable alto to Mirelle Darc, Faye Dunaway, Carla Romanelli and the female protagonists of legendary old series – 17 Moments of Spring, Onedin Family. Anyone who was a child in the 70s and 80s watched the literary TV show Cimbora, which he hosted for decades with Jácint Juhász.

She was a strict mother

According to his words, he was biased in favor of children, it never occurred to him to choose a more comfortable life without children. Her daughter, Barbara Horváth, is a dramatist, and her son, Virgil Horváth, became an actor. We know from her that she was an inconsistent, sometimes strict, sometimes lenient mother, stricter with Barbara because she is older and a girl. He used to say, “if it breaks, if it tears, the curtain will go up at seven”: if his children came home late, he wouldn’t let them into the apartment, so they spent the night in the stairwell a few times, while of course their mother couldn’t sleep because of the worry of where they were. Virgil also demands punctuality from his 7- and 11-year-old daughters. He says he learned politeness and good manners from his mother, who was known by everyone as a lovely lady, but nevertheless had a fiery nature, which he also inherited.

He didn’t say how sick he was

After he was accepted to the college, he moved away from home, but before his first class, at 7 in the morning, he sat with his mother every day. Who saw him on stage only once, in his third year, in a director’s exam play, but as a graduated actor he could no longer see his son. Because soon after that, events took a tragic turn. His family and friends knew he was sick, but he didn’t talk about his illness, he didn’t want to burden them. Thus, the fact that he had incurable cancer was revealed to them only in the last week.

Her children were unsuspecting on vacation when she was hospitalized, and by the time they got home, she was in the intensive care unit. The day before his death, he got better, talked about how everything would be great – and then the next day, on August 6, 1993, at the age of 49, he closed his eyes forever.

He was married only once

Her beauty didn’t leave her colleagues cold either, regardless of generation: we know this from Miklós Gábor’s 1976 diary, but nothing happened between them.

– He is cheerful and challenging, I am old-fashioned and evasive and “beautifying”, this is my relationship with girls these days, I don’t see any other possibility. We have nothing to do with each other. We shouldn’t even go as far as the usual actors’ kiss, because there was “something”, but even that shouldn’t be said.” – written by Miklós Gábor. In the 80s, a romance developed between Nóra Káldi and György Kálmán, whom she married shortly before his death in 1989.

Since the death of his son, the actor Virgil Horváth, every Christmas he cooks the broth according to his recipe: beef with matzo balls.