Beata Poźniak
Creating social impact. Promoting the stories of strong women through writing, film, art and audiobooks.
“… Poźniak is an extremely talented actress... unusually perceptive and expressive. Her tremendous commitment and passion was felt not only by the camera, but at all levels of the production. Beata is very bright and dynamic... “
– OSCAR WINNER, OLIVER STONE
Film/TV
Beata Poźniak as Marina Oswald, Gary Oldman’s wife in eight time Oskar nominated film “JFK” , directed by Oliver Stone.
Recently Poźniak appears in an Agnieszka Holland feature film based on true facts about 1930’s genocide Holodomor, “Mr. Jones” where she portrays a true historical figure, journalist Rhea Clyman, who gets deported from Soviet Union for reporting to the west. Film pays homage to brave journalism. In the SCI-FI television series “Babylon 5” she played the female President of the World, Suzanna Lunchenko and in George Lucas’s “The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Adventures: Adventures in the Secret Service” plays Irene, a revolutionary overthrowing the Russian government. She guest starred on “Mad About You” where she played Helen Hunt’s and Paul Reiser’s maid, for which the episode was called “Maid About You”. On the hit TV series “JAG” Beata played a double agent working for the CIA and Mossad . On “Melrose Place” she played Dr. Fielding a single mom marrying a gay character, who becomes a father to her child.
Audiobooks
“A noted stage and screen performer in her native Poland, Beata Pozniak was looking for a “meaningful” role for her U.S. screen debut. She found one of the most intriguing around, that of Lee Harvey Oswald’s Soviet-born wife Marina in JFK...”
TIME Magazine
🎧 As a voice artist, she has narrated, “The Winter Palace: A Novel of Catherine the Great”, a 19 hour audiobook for Penguin Random House, where she made use of her European background in bringing to life the 78 characters and their colorful accents. These included the imperious German, Catherine, the clever and charming Polish maid, Barbara, and the devious Russian foreign minister, Betzhuvev, or the proper British ambassador, Sir Charles. After embodying one of the most intriguing women in history, she did the follow up and read another 19 hour story of the “Empress of the Night: A Novel of Catherine the Great”. This was followed by a teen romance/adventure/sci-fi thriller, “Illuminae”, by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff, which won an AUDIE Award. After that, she co-narrated “The Tsar of Love and Techno” by Anthony Maara which was selected in the Top 5 Best Audiobooks of the year by The Washington Post. I was so honored and proud to have narrated “Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead”, the finalist for the Man Booker International Prize written by the recent NOBEL Prize winner in Literature, Olga Tokarczuk, for which I received a EARPHONES Award (2019). And for narrating and producing the European Homer Award winning book, “Libretto for the Desert” poetry dedicated to the victims of genocide and war for which she won the 2019 International Maria Konopnicka Award and received a 2019 Voice Arts Award nomination in the Outstanding Performance in a Spoken Word and Storytelling Category which was so humbling. Recently, she won another EARPHONES Award (2020) for ‘The Light in Hidden Places” written by Sharon Cameron, a #1 New York Times bestselling author.
Narration & Video Games
Beata also has narrated documentaries such as, “The Officer’s Wife” about the mass murder of Polish officers in the Katyń forrest and co-narrated with Michael York and John Savage “Freedom from Despair”, a film about communism, which won several Awards and received an honorable mention in the US Congress.
🏆 In the video game world she is voicing Skarlet, the Blood Queen in “Mortal Kombat 11” for which she has received a Voice Arts Award in the “Outstanding Video Game Character, Best Performance” category.
Poetry/Film poems
Beata has directed experimental film poems. “People on the Bridge” is inspired by Hiroshige Utagawa ukiyo - art piece and a poem written by Nobel Prize winner Wislawa Szymborska. “Mnemosyne – International Women’s Day” is based on a poem and a painting that Pozniak created. The work depicts a community of all races of the world in a female form. It evokes the achievements of women along their struggle for peace and equality in the face of discrimination and war. Screened and acknowledged at several international film festivals. Pozniak has been selected as a one of the unique and new voices internationally for moving poems. She is one of the selected artists and subject of Sarah Tremlet’s new academic book “The Poetics of Poetry Film”. Poźniak has also written and directed experimental stage plays based on poetry. Among them are “Immigration and the American Experience”, “Poeticus Umbilicus” or “We and They”. The later and “The Return of Umbilicus” was selected for the Peter Sellars’s International Theatre Festival. As a poet, in 2019 she was invited by the Yale Club to read her work. Her poems have been translated into Armenian, Greek, Korean and Polish. Recently, her poems were published in “The Seventh Quarry Poetry” and also in Bangali – Bilingual Poetry Magazine “Shabdaguchha”.
Celebrity Presenter
Beata frequently sits on judging panels for the Television Academy, Primetime Emmy Awards and has been a Celebrity Presenter for the IFP (Independent Feature Project West) "Independent Spirit Awards", The Firebird Awards and presented posthumously an Award to Audrey Hepburn at the Human Rights Film Festival supported by the United Nations.
Actress Beata Poźniak and Academy Award Winner Pawel Pawlikowski
© Photo: Henryk Pietkiewicz
Giving Back
She is a human rights activist, and introduced the first bill in the history of US Congress to recognize officially International Women’s Day in the United States.
“Beata Pozniak, a Polish immigrant is behind the first ever recorded official bill for celebrating International Women’s Day in America. Since the 1980’s, Pozniak first worked with the Mayor of Los Angeles, Governor of California, and the U.S. Congress for political recognition of International Women’s Day in the United States. At Beata Pozniak’s suggestion, Congresswoman Waters introduced the first bill in the history of the U.S. (H.J. Res. 316) for national recognition of this special day, designating March 8th, 1994 as “International Women’s Day”.
Beata holds a Masters of Fine Arts Degree in Film and Drama and for several years was on the faculty at USC ( Masters Degree Program ) and UCLA and taught Character Development for Actors and Writers.