I never thought that could happen because I was very modest." Within a year, Suvadova had a flourishing acting and modeling career going. "I worked on the stage, I've done a lot of TV work, and movies. Sometimes I'd do 20 shows a week on stage. I had my own show doing TV announcing work. I traveled from city to city talking to people and I was on every Saturday night. I'm well known there and was on the covers of magazines." This success was compounded when she appeared in Kolya, playing a character named Blanka. "She's a young cello player," she says. "I played violin for eight years when I was very young, and they were looking for someone who knew how to hold the instrument and do finger position so it would look real on screen. It was about the relationship between a small Russian boy and a Czech bachelor, an old guy who played cello, and I was a girl who was teaching the boy how to play the cello. It had very subtle humor and it was a very nice film; I didn't think it was going to win an Oscar but the director was very good and he was ready to win." Suvadova says she didn't let the film's success go to her head. "After I was in Kolya, after that for a couple months I had kind of a star feeling because there was a big explosion and lots of journalists talking to me, but then I said no real stars here and in Europe don't act like that So, after 2 i years of being a star in Czechoslovakia, I decided to try my luck in Los Angeles." The actress left her native land three years ago. "I was overwhelmed and I had done everything in Czechoslovakia so I felt I had nowhere to go," she says. "I knew no English and I didn't know anyone here, but I was so unhappy I felt I needed something different in my life. An American director who saw me in Kolya cast me in a small movie he was making in Prague, and I came over to LA. to do the dubbing, because it had to be dubbed into several languages. I spent several months here and I saw these palm trees and the ocean for the first time in my life, and I really felt this was what I needed. So I tried to get my work permit, but it wasn't easy. I started in the year 2001 then September ii happened and they stopped letting so many people in." According to Sylvia, acting in the
	United States is a whole new ball game. "We don't have a system of casting directors and agencies in Czechoslovakia," she says. "But I love it here; I love the system and when you don't get one job you can go audition for another and there are always things coming out. I love the energy here." While American society may be more open in some ways than the European scene, Suvadova says European movies and television showcase a sexual frankness only just beginning to be seen in America. "In Czechoslovakia we have those night shows that are really open, where you can talk about anything and air movies that show everything. I hear people say Americans are more prudish, but it's okay." Fortunately, Suvadova's not too prudish herself. "I don't say that I do not do nudity, but I am a little shy," she says. "I'm not a big exhibitionist On the stage I can be, but in my private life I'm not. In Kolya there is one scene where the bachelor is trying to do something with me and little	Kolya comes into the room. I was lying on the bed and I was supposed to sit and my blouse was supposed to fall down. They gave me some whiskey to drink and I cried real tears during that scene because I was only 2 1 and I didn't know I was going to have to do it. They told me that day. It's not like in America where they put all those things in the contract and you have to sign it and you don't have agencies and managers [to protect you]." Sylvia recalls a little last minute armtwisting convinced her to disrobe for the scene in Kolya. "it was noon and I had a flight that day because I had to be on stage that night, and the director was asking me to show my naked body!" she says. "I said no! They told me I didn't have to be afraid and that they would be so happy if I did it and they would be so proud. It's still in the movie, just a little bit. I had to do something like that on The Beautiful Blue Danube too I was 19, and I had a lead in the movie, and I had to do a scene making love in the