Actress. She was one of Hungary’s most recognizable character players. With her earthy features and trademark close-cropped hair, she was most often cast as strong-willed matriarchs, both dramatic and comic. She appeared in nearly 100 films,  including “Friday Rose” (1938),  “Janika” (1949),  “Professor Hannibal” (1956),  “Sleepless Years” (1959),  “Dialogue” (1963),  “Honey On the Knife” (1974),  and “Homecoming” (1983),  as well as in thousands of stage performances and scores of TV and radio programs.  Gobbi was born in Budapest and studied at the Actors’ Academy there.  She made her professional debut with the National Theatre in 1935.  From 1960 to 1970 she was a member of the Attila Jozsef Theatre,  followed by stints with the National Theatre (1971 to 1982) and the Jozsef Katona Theatre (1982 until her death).  Apart from her thespian talents,  Gobbi was admired for her profound respect for Hungary’s theatrical past.  She founded the popular Gizi Bajor Actors Museum in 1952 and later established the nation’s first retirement home for stage and screen performers.  In 1964,  when the Communist government demolished the historic National Theatre building to make way for a subway station,  Gobbi launched a decades-long campaign to construct a new,  permanent home for the National’s stock company.  She was still battling bureaucrats over the project at the time of her death.  The new National Theatre in Budapest finally opened in 2002. (bio by: Bobb Edwards)