However, he remained truly dedicated to theatre, saying in an interview for Gazeta Wyborcza:
I am not one to split hairs but I know that the time you spend working in this profession pays off in the end. Sometimes it’s after the one-hundredth performance that we have some revelation. Theatre is magic and that’s what keeps me in it. The stage, backstage, it all conjures up feelings that I can’t even describe, I admit it. And despite so many years on the stage, the same incredibly intense feelings come over me, just like forty years ago, when I saw Dorman backstage at the Puppet Theatre for the first time. Empty, dark and quiet. The stage decorations removed, a little light on somewhere, in the corner forgotten remnants of scenery. And that empty auditorium, like a huge, strange, sleeping creature, which the moment it awakes transforms into something wonderful. And it depends on me whether that will happen. That is what keeps me in theatre, despite the fact that it goes against all reason.
Gajos has been a member of the National Theatre company since 2003. There he played the leading parts of Willy Loman in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman (2004, dir. Kazimierz Kutz), Father Kubala in Jerzy Pilch’s Narty Ojca Świętego (Holy Father’s Skis, 2004, dir. Piotr Cieplak), as well as the part of Fouquet in Nick Dear’s Power (2005, dir. Jan Englert), Czelcow in Sławomir Mrożek’s Miłość na Krymie (Love in the Crimea, 2007, dir. Jerzy Jarocki), and Lebedev in Ivanov, written by Anton Chekhov (2008 dir. Jan Englert). He starred as the Father in Daily Soup, a contemporary play by Amanita Muskarii, directed by a young theatre director, Małgorzata Bogajewska (2007). You could also see him on the stage of Polonia Theatre performing the title role in Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s Romulus the Great (2009, dir. Krzysztof Zanussi).
In the early 2000s Gajos also created attention-grabbing roles at the Television Theatre: the General in Janusz Głowacki’s play Czwarta Siostra (The Fourth Sister, 2002, dir. Agnieszka Glińska), and Claudius in Shakespeare’s Hamlet (2003, dir. Łukasz Barczyk). In Norymerga (Nuremberg, 2006, dir. Waldemar Krzystek), a play written by Wojciech Tomczyk in which the author attempts to settle accounts with Poland under communist regime, Gajos performance as the Colonel was outstanding.
Gajos’s major recent film roles include Andrzej Hoffman, a man entangled in the Polish reality of the 1960s, in Wojciech Wójcik’s Tam i z Powrotem (There and Back, 2001), Cześnik in Andrzej Wajda’s Zemsta (The Revenge, 2002), and Brother Zdrówko in Jasminum, a magical film directed by Jan Jakub Kolski (2006). In addition, in Jerzy Antczak’s Chopin: Pragnienie Miłości (Chopin: Desire for Love, 2002) Gajos played the part of the Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich, and in a thought-provoking romantic comedy Zakochany Anioł (Angel in Love), directed by Artur Baron Więcek (2005) he performed as Lupin, a Warsaw tramp.
He created interesting performances in television – in TV series such as Patryk Vega’s Pitbull (also a feature, 2005), Ekipa (The Crew) directed by Agnieszka Holland, Magdalena Łazarkiewicz and Kasia Adamik (2007) and Bez Tajemnic – an HBO series based on Izraeli Be tipul and American In Treatment, directed by Jacek Borcuch and Anna Kazejak (2012).