For actors, models, and musicians it’s a huge success if they are accepted on an international scale. Being accepted brings one a lot of fame, fortune, spotlight and even drama, exposure, maybe a failure in some cases. Many of them try, but few of those can achieve it. Let’s see, which Hungarian stars turned their dreams into reality.
Iván Kamarás
With a successful acting career in Hungary behind him, Kamarás decided to move to Los Angeles and conquer Hollywood. His persistent work fruited. He took Christopher Lamber’s former role in the movie The Mark (2012) as the Anti-Christ and was in Bruce Willis’ A Good Day To Die Hard (2013) which was filmed in Hungary. Also, he was part of World War Z (2013) and Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008). He lives in the US, but if there is a Hungarian production available, he immediately flies back home.
Iván Fenyő
In 2005, luck shined upon him, when he got a role in the Sam Mendes directed Jarhead. It seemed like that there is nothing that can stop him from achieving worldwide fame, but many of his scenes were cut from the final movie, so we could only see him for a couple of seconds. He also took part in A Good Day To Die Hard (2013) and in the HBO Special series, The Borgias (2011-2013) where we could see him next to Jeremy Irons.
Béla Lugosi
He was born in 1882 as Béla Blaskó in Lugos, Hungary. His career started in the 1910s in Hungary, but later he relocated to Vienna and from there to Germany. After all of this, he moved to the United States where, in the beginning, he did not get a lot of jobs due to his lack of English. Some months later, he successfully took The Tragedy of Men to the stage and got a role at the New York Broadway. In 1931, the whole world got to know his name, because Universal Pictures gave him a contract, and took the role of Dracula. Still, to this day he is considered the best embodiment for the vampire. He died in 1956.
Pál Lukács
Born as Pál Munkácsi, he was an Oscar- and Golden Globe Award-Winner Hungarian actor. When he was a kid, he and his brother got adopted by Munkácsi Pál. He relatively took up acting early, (even though he wanted to be a merchant) he was featured in several plays in the 1910s and the 1920s. In 1927, Adolf Zukor (who also has Hungarian origins) invited him to Hollywood. At that point, he had immense popularity in the film industry. He took part in 60 productions, and in 1943 he got an Oscar for his portrayal in the film Watch on the Rhine (1943). In 1971, he was in Morocco with his wife, who unexpectedly died. The next day, he got a heart attack and died.
Nimród Antal
He is an exception on our list since Nimród is actually a director – although he played the main role in Hungary before in the movie called Közel a szerelemhez (1999). In any case, after the success of Kontroll (2003), he got noticed in Hollywood as a director: Vacancy (2007), Armored (2009), and Predators (2010) are movies directed by Antal, and they are filled with stars. Adrien Brody, Danny Trejo, Kate Beckinsale, and Luke Wilson are some names, who are in his films. His good friend, Robert Rodriguez got him acting in the movie Machete (2010) where he played a security guard and even has a Hungarian line.