His interest in the arts began with music, a passion that ran in the family – his older sister played the piano and the younger, the clarinet. From attending music school in Wągrowiec and listening to jazz in his free time, he admits in an interview with Culture.pl that while he strayed into classical music it was 'Ravel only. I was attracted to the images of landscapes, closer to the music of films than traditional classics'.
Employing his musical interest in theatre and cinema, he plays a Coltrane piece on alto saxophone in Paweł Pawlikowski’s film Ida and sings Italian disco in Kornél Mundruczó’s stage production, The Bat. The multi-talented artist has been recognised for his ability to completely immerse himself in his roles and manifest incredibly moving performances. Ogrodnik’s dedication, reflected by the courage required by his process and his initiative to break down barriers of the self and explore the dark depths of alternate perspectives, has already been rewarded by professionals in the industry.
Starting from Scratch
In high school Ogrodnik met Anna Szymańska, founder of the Poznań Theatre, when she was casting MplusM – and managed to get a role. But even with this experience, it would take him three tries to be accepted into Kraków’s Academy of Dramatic Arts (PWST). As he later said:
Our course group was very lucky because the teachers with whom we worked went far beyond the canon. Working with Roman Gancarczyk, Małgorzata Hajewska-Krzysztofik or Grzegorz Mielczarek was always a pursuit of, and not a following of formals. They never tried to impose anything upon us.
During his studies he was cast in Paweł Miśkiewicz’s Polish Club, which represented one of the great spiritual experiences for Poles and contributed to the social foundation that shaped modern Polish identity.
I think it was with Miśkiewicz that I understood that the art of this discipline depends on starting from scratch, that you need to surpass your own limitations.
Catching Fleeting Moments
Ogrodnik’s performance was witnessed by the director Leszek Dawid, and the two would soon meet on the set of You Are God. This movie would go on to be one of the biggest recent hits in Polish cinema.
You Are God is the story of the legendary hip-hop band Paktofonika, and Ogrodnik was cast in the role of Rahim, a withdrawn and shy teenager. Along with two colleagues from PWST, Marcin Kowalczyk and Tomasz Schuchardt, they created a poignant portrayal of the three musicians on the threshold of their careers. With only two months to prepare their roles, the group travelled to concerts, held conversations with Rahim and Fokus (the surviving members of Paktofonika) and listened to their old records.
Leszek wanted us to understand how the guys would have composed their songs in the '90s. On an old PC with ancient software we had been working on a track for four hours when for a moment the power went out and everything disappeared. This was an excellent example. We quickly understood why this was torture.
The movie became the launch for Ogrodnik’s career. Over a million people flocked to the cinema to see it. At the Gdynia Film Festival, the country's most important annual cinema event, Ogrodnik won an award for his role as a supporting actor.
Life Feels Good
Dawid Ogrodnik missed the first casting call for the role of Mateusz in Maciej Pieprzyca’s Life Feels Good. Once the director already had a selection of young actors, Ogrodnik came to see him in a jogging suit and shaved head. He managed to convey himself as a sensitive and intelligent actor able to play the role of a boy with cerebral palsy in a long conversation over coffee. In eight months, the actor underwent a complete transformation to effectively portray the film’s protagonist.
At the beginning I could not imagine that I could create the character out of only gestures and grimaces. This ignorance motivated me. I spent months thinking about how to build a character without words.
In an interview with Sebastian Łupakow from Newsweek, he recalls that
the whole wall of my room was covered with sheets of notes describing scene after scene. I looked at them and wrote an internal monologue about what I felt, what the emotions were.