Deceived, abandoned, left alone with a child by the “godfather” of times past. The drama of Olga Tudorache, Romania’s great actress

Olga Tudorache, one of Romania’s greatest actresses, was born on October 11, 1929, in Oituz, Bacău. Olga Tudorache was the daughter of Eusebiu Tudorache, a pilot who died at the age of 33 in an airplane accident.

Olga Tudorache graduated in 1951 from the Theatre Institute in Bucharest, and in September of the same year she was employed at the Youth Theatre in Bucharest, where she carried out her vast activity uninterruptedly until 1966, when the theatre merged with the Nottara Theatre.

The talented actress received the National Order “Steaua României” in the rank of Grand Officer (1 December 2000) “for outstanding artistic achievements and for the promotion of culture, on the National Day of Romania”,

She was married to Cristea Avram, one of the most appreciated Romanian actors of all times, about whom I wrote more details here. He was known for his charm that made him irresistible to the fair sex, and the most “famous” actors of the time could have taken lessons from him. Cristea Avram cheated on the actress soon after he ended up acting with French actors. Actress Marina Vlady “took a liking to him”, but so did he to her.

In no time at all, a love affair developed between the two that, if it didn’t contain a third element, might have been a very beautiful one. The truly dramatic part of this love story is that in Romania Cristea Avram left behind a grieving wife, the famous actress Olga Tudorache, but also the son they had together, Alexandru.

Olga Tudorache was applauded even on her hospital bed

The talented actress devoted her whole life to the theatre and to her son, now settled in America. A painful but extremely special moment in the actress’s career came in 2012, when the great actress suffered a stroke and had to be taken to hospital. Her audience stayed in the audience and applauded her for dozens of minutes in support. She was 83 at the time.

“The greatest success of my life, the best thing I’ve done in my life. is my son, whom I had with the actor Cristea Avram. And here I was lucky. I didn’t even know when he went through school and he was always top of his class. They’re both wonderful, him and my grandson, his son, who turned three years ago. I have had the greatest successes in life, not on stage”, said Olga Tudorache, according to bzi.ro.

More precisely, the image was the following: a theatre where people applaud loudly for 20 minutes, when there is no actor on stage. The scene happened in the middle of the performance in which Olga was playing, when she became ill. The audience showed their moral support in the Metropolis Theatre one April evening in 2012, during the performance “Fish with peas” by Ana-Maria Bamberger, directed by Olga Tudorache.

In heartbreaking fashion, Olga suffered a severe stroke in front of an audience. She forgot her cue and asked her scene partner, “Who are you?”, “Where are we?”.

“I was trying to figure out what kind of situation she was in. I thought, for a moment, that he had forgotten the line, I tried to improvise, I saw that, indeed, something was happening. The people backstage called the rescue immediately. We apologised and got out… What impressed me then was that the audience – who should have been frustrated that they hadn’t seen the show through to the end, that they had paid for the tickets – understood that Mrs Olga had been hurt and applauded for 20 minutes. She was already in the hospital and the audience was still applauding”, actress Tamara Crețulescu told in the show “Interviuri (ne)convenționale” on Channel 33.

Olga Tudorache died at the age of 88 in a hospital in Bucharest, leaving the theatre world poorer.