Anda Onesa was undoubtedly one of the most beautiful actresses in our country in the years before the Revolution.
However, if her name doesn’t mean much to you nowadays (not like Stella Popescu’s, for example), it’s because she had a relatively short career in Romania and we’ll explain why in a moment.
Anda Onesa, one of the most beautiful actresses in Romania
As I said before, few people will remember Anda Onesa in 2022, and it is not at all the fault of her not having talent, on the contrary. It seems that the artist was a constant victim of communism, often being persecuted by the Securitate.
Anda Onesa was born on May 21, 1960, in Pucioasa, Dâmbovița County, and later graduated from the Faculty of Physiology in Bucharest. This was in 1983.
However, fate smiled on her for the first time in her last year of high school, when director Timotei Ursu noticed her and later selected her to play the role of Anișoarei in the film Septembrie, made in 1978. In this film, the young girl had the opportunity to perform alongside Geo Costiniu, considered, at the time, a sort of Alain Delon of Romania.
A year later, in 1979, Onesa managed to score two more films, as follows: Tragic Vacation, directed by Constantin Văeni and Duios Anastasia Trecea, directed by Alexandru Tatos.
For the leading role in the last-mentioned film she received the award for Best Actress at the Karvoly Vary Film Festival in 1980.
In 1985, she had the opportunity to act in two other films, Primăvara Bobocilor, directed by Mircea Mureșan and Pas în Doi, by Dan Pița. In 1986 she also collaborated with Sergiu Nicolaescu in the film Noi, Cei din Linia Primai.
The actress was forced by the secret service to seek her fate in other parts of the world
Anda Onesa had a rather short but intense career. Basically, in the short time she wasn’t under the Security Service’s scrutiny, the actress managed to attract the public’s attention, both through her talent and her beauty.
However, the miracle didn’t last long, since, as we previously reported, at one point the Communists “had their eye on her”, being suspected of being a spy for “foreign agents”, if we may use that expression.
“She was often invited to festivals abroad, but during Ceausescu’s time this was not well regarded. When she won the “Karlovy Vary” prize, the secretaries took her to task, saying “what’s with this, a shitty 17-year-old child” They thought she was a spy”, the actress’s father, Ion Onesa, once said.
He also said that it was the Securitate that allegedly drove his daughter out of Romania. “She said to me, ‘Why, father, they threatened me with death.’ Then I told her to go to America for good, where she had been called to visit some friends,” he said.
Done and done! Anda Onesa went to the United States, but life wasn’t all milk and honey there either.
According to her mother, Rurela Onesa, Anda worked as a model, then as a college teacher, but all the money she earned she spent on diction classes.
In America she also met the graphic designer Daniel Ionescu, who would become her first husband. They were married for two years, but due to the classic character mismatch, their story ended rather quickly.
“Daniel took everything from Anda, from the furniture to the two cars, and came to Romania,” Rurela Onesa added.
“I started to have problems with the Securitate in high school, from the moment I returned from Poland, where the Solidarnii had started fighting in Gdansk. The Securist in Pucioasa saw fit to keep me one day for three hours in the basement of the building and drive me crazy with questions about Poland and my neighbours, the Adventists. Well, I was young but not stupid…
In April 1989, someone wanted to crash my car in Rosetti Square in Bucharest. I was saved by a couple who screamed as long as their mouths would hold “murderers, murderers”. They saw the car that followed me and accelerated when I was crossing the street. The car stopped and four men got out. Those men screamed so loudly that a few passers-by gathered and recognized me and I think that made the four of them run away…”, Anda Onesa told Jurnalul.ro in an exclusive interview.