Vladimir Penev

For a generation of Bulgarian cinema-goers his is the voice of Arnold Schwarzenegger, of Jack Nicholson and of George Clooney — a dubbing career that earned him the Dublaart award for lifetime contribution and has run alongside forty years of stage work. Vlado Penev was born in Sofia on 24 October 1958 and trained at the Higher Institute of Theatre Arts in the acting class of Nikolay Lyutskanov, graduating in 1982. He made his professional debut in 1985 at the Youth Theatre Nikolay Binev and stayed until 1992, since when the Ivan Vazov National Theatre has been his company; Don Quixote and Angels in America are among the productions there. He has also worked with the Varna Drama Theatre, Sfumato and the Little City Theatre Off the Channel, in cinema and television, and as a director, and has taken both the Ikar and the Askeer for a leading male role. In 2013 he held the post of Bulgaria's Minister of Culture. As narrator he appeared in Ave Maria, a Christmas concert with Lucy Diakovska and the Sofia Philharmonic at Bulgaria Hall on 27 December 2018. He is the son of the Zemedelsko zname journalist Nikola Penev, and Margarita Mladenova assisted in his VITIZ class; from 2003 he has also belonged to the Malak Gradski Teatar Zad Kanala. He played Pluzhek in Zift in 2008 and worked steadily at Theatre 199, and among his stage roles are Zhana and Idiot 2012 at the National Theatre, The Miser at Zad Kanala, The Seagull at the Azaryan Theatre and, from May 2017, Serge in Art at the Satirical Theatre, where he also directed Dakota. His graduation work in directing was Charles Evered's Class. The ministry of 2013 was in the caretaker government of Marin Raykov.