Otakar Jirák, the Czech Voice of Alf, Manny and Obelix, Dies at 77. His Screen Daughter Asks That He Be Remembered as More Than a Voice

Otakar Jirák, the Czech voice of Alf, of Manny the mammoth in Ice Age and of Obelix in Asterix and the Vikings, has died at 77. To Czech children he was also Hele, the orange half of a puppet double act on Czech Television. A screen daughter who said goodbye on Sunday asked people to remember that he was more than a voice.

Jirák died on Saturday, October 17, after a long illness. His wife, Drahomíra, told the Czech News Agency on Sunday. The family has asked for a private farewell.

Ota Jirák, as almost everyone called him, had stepped back from public life in recent years because of his health. His death comes a week after Czech dubbing lost another of its best known voices, Jiří Štěpnička, who spoke for Harrison Ford.

A mime who found his voice

Jirák was born in Debř, near Mladá Boleslav, and grew up in Prague. He trained as a puppeteer at DAMU, the Prague performing arts academy, and his early career was mostly silent.

In the 1970s he worked as a mime with Alfréd Ctibor Turba’s circus troupe, and in the early 1980s he joined Boris Hybner’s pantomime company GAG. He played with Karel Makoň’s theatre, the Provisional Theatre of František Ringo Čech and, as a guest, Prague’s Semafor. In 2003 he joined the Municipal Theatre in Mladá Boleslav, back in the region where he was born.

His first screen part came in 1976 in Ján Roháč’s television comedy Tři chrobáci (Three Beetles), as one of three curious bugs exploring a human home, alongside Bolek Polívka and Josef Dvořák. Directors kept casting him after that, usually, as Czech Television put it, as friendly, easygoing types “with a leaning toward humor.”

Czech viewers know him from the fairy tale series Arabela, the sitcom Nováci, Život na zámku, Slunečná and the long-running hospital drama Ordinace v růžové zahradě, where his best known recent role was Chief Physician Pantoflíček. Film fans remember him as the eccentric Uncle František in the 1994 adaptation of Saturnin.

The voice of Alf, Manny and Obelix

For dubbing, though, the body that made him a mime mattered less than the sound. Czech Television described his voice as “rich and honey-colored,” and it found work everywhere.

He was the furry alien Alf in the Czech version of the American sitcom. He voiced Tigger in the animated Winnie the Pooh series, worked on Garfield 2 and on the Polish animated cycle about the hapless hunter Pampalini. He was Manny the mammoth in Ice Age and Obelix in the animated Asterix and the Vikings.

In Czech animation he voiced the bedtime series Hajadla and voiced parts in both Fimfárum features, the puppet films made from Jan Werich’s fairy tales.

And for a generation of Czech children he was Hele. In Czech Television’s Studio Kamarád, Jirák played and voiced the orange character, one half of the famous pair Jů and Hele. That one part kept his voice in Czech living rooms for years.

“More than the voice of several generations”

Many colleagues said goodbye on social media. One of the most quoted messages came from actor Eva Burešová, who played opposite him in the series Slunečná. He was her late father there, a dead dad who kept turning up as a ghost.

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“Daddy, I’m saying goodbye to you, again,” she wrote, in a message quoted by Evropa 2. “Now I’m afraid you won’t appear to me by the well, on our bench.”

She said she had told him everything to his face. Then she asked for something any voice actor’s family would understand. Jirák, she wrote, was “also a stunning painter, author, actor, but above all a human being. A human being with eyes so full of love and support.”

She finished with advice for everyone reading: “I wish you would all find the time to visit anyone, before it’s too late.”

Jirák did paint. He and Drahomíra lived in a house near Mladá Boleslav, and in his spare time he painted and made prints and enamels.

Small in stature

The family’s death notice carries a short motto, in Around Prague’s translation: “Small in stature, but huge thanks to his heart, kindness and empathy.”

It fits the way Czech audiences met him: a small man on screen with a big, warm voice. After a five-year break, he went back on stage in Mladá Boleslav as Richard Načeradec in the musical comedy Muži v offsidu.

Muži v offsidu in Mladá Boleslav; Ota Jirák is in the back row. Photo: Martin Špelda, Městské divadlo Mladá Boleslav, CC BY-SA 3.0

His roles in dubbing tell their own story about the job. Alf, Manny, Obelix, Tigger and Hele are all characters whose charm lives in the voice: big, gruff, soft at the right moment, funny without trying too hard. Jirák’s skill was making each of them sound like someone you’d be happy to have in the room.

Czech dubbing has a long tradition of actors who become a foreign star’s or character’s permanent voice at home, and lose a bit of their own name to it. Burešová’s message is a reminder that the people behind those voices had whole careers, and whole lives, around them.

Sources: ČT24, Czech Television, “Zemřel herec, moderátor a výtvarník Otakar Jirák” (October 18, 2026); Deník.cz, “Zemřel herec Otakar Jirák. Proslavil se jako Obelix i Hele ze Studia Kamarád” (October 18, 2026); Evropa 2, “Zemřel herec Ota Jirák. Seriálová dcera Eva Burešová mu poslala dojemný vzkaz” (October 18, 2026); Around Prague, “Actor Otakar Jirák, Czech voice of Alf and Obelix, has died at 77” (October 18, 2026); Aktuálně.cz (October 18, 2026). Quotations from Czech sources are translated by Voice Over Herald. Photos: Michal Škvor and Martin Špelda, Městské divadlo Mladá Boleslav, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

Lee este artículo en español: Muere Otakar Jirák, la voz checa de Alf, Manny y Obélix, a los 77 años. Su hija de ficción pide recordarlo como algo más que una voz

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