and learn how I should speak it. I have a musical ear, so I think I'm going to remove my accent completely." Then she will be able to walk among us completely undetected well, unless you look at her. But there's no need to fear this European import. "I'm very, very sensitive," Sylvia says. "I love people, and I'm very empathic. But I'm strong; when I fall down, I don't cry , I just get up and go my way until I get what I want." Of course, in Hollywood, "getting what you want" sometimes requires you to crush your enemies. But Suvadova isn't into that game. "I'm trying not to hurt anybody," she laughs. If you don't recognize Sylvia Suvadova from her contact lens commercials, you may have caught her in Kolya, a good natured comedy from Czechoslovakia that won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 1997. That success came after Suvadova developed into something of a media darling in her homeland. "I'm from a tiny town in northern Slovakia; it's probably not even on the maps," she says. "My parents were very poor we didn't have a car or anything. My parents were Communists because they had to be; if you wanted to have a nice, modest life it was better to be part of the Communist party. And I thought I was going to be in the party, too. I didn't know anything about Communism being bad or wrong because we were in a small town. I didn't know people in the capital of Slovakia or in Prague who couldn't do what they wanted to do, like actors and musicians and artists. Now I understand it but in those days I was a girl. I wanted to be a teacher and teach children how to play violin." When she was 17, Sylvia's career aspirations got a little boost from a local event you may have actually heard of: The collapse of the Berlin Wall As a result, Western influences and opportunities began flooding into her country "It changed my life because we had no dreams before the wall fell," she says. "Communism taught us not to dream. So my mind suddenly opened and I felt I can really go far there, and I can dream more and try to make my dreams come true. I was asked to be a model and I was able to see that there was more than my hometown in Slovakia. I went to the Academy of Acting at the capital of Slovakia, and they accept only three girls a year, and I got accepted.