Mira Furlan

Role: Danielle Rousseau

Mira Furlan was born in Yugoslavia, and became one of that nation's leading actresses in stage, film, and television. She was called "the Meryl Streep of Yugoslavia". During the Wars of Yugoslavian Succession, she, born in Zagreb and married to a Serb (director Goran Gajic), did her best to oppose a war in which neighbors were killing each other, and, in her professional life, to ignore it, appearing in theatre productions in both Zagreb and Belgrade. The result was a terrible media campaign to vilify her, culminating in repeated death threats. In 1991 she and her husband came to the USA as refugees.
After a little television and theatre work, she was cast in the role of Ambassador Delenn in "Babylon 5" in 1992. Soon after "Babylon 5" ended production in 1998, she and her husband became the parents of Marko.
In 2002 through 2005, she returned to Croatia to perform in a production of "Medea" with the Ulysses Theatre Company on the island of Mali Brijuni. In 2004, she made her return to Belgrade to film a movie entitled "Disi duboko". But she now regards herself as an American whose "old country" was Yugoslavia, a nation that no longer exists.