Fioka puna talenta
And who knows what's inside of us and what we can achieve...
Mustafa was born in Banja Luka in the midst of World War II. Due to continuous bombings and his father's premature death from tuberculosis, his mother sent Mustafa to Zagreb to live with his grandparents. There he finishes the first grade of elementary school, but also plays his first role. In the school play, because of his long hair and high voice, he played Little Red Riding Hood.
Mustafa completed primary school in the municipality of Bosanski Novi, and then moved to Rijeka, where he attended high school. It was his grandmother who "pushed" him into acting. Namely, Mustafa was an intelligent boy, but not too interested in school. For fear that Mustafa would fail on the street where he spent most of his time, his grandmother decided to enroll him in the amateur theater group "Viktor Car Emin".
The head of the family, Mustafa's grandfather, did not know about his acting engagement! Grandfather was old and no longer knew how to count years, so grandmother and Mustafa hid from him that Mustafa had only completed two grades of high school! That's how they got peace in the house. In order to earn pocket money, Mustafa worked as a bouncer at Rijeka dance halls as a high school student.
At first, he enrolled in the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb. In his studies, he was a talented slacker, as he later described himself. He would always come to rehearsals unprepared. - They threw him out just like that. - he recalled. Nevertheless, he successfully completed the academy and got a job at the Zagreb Youth Theater.
He performed his first play, "Hvarkinja" in 1966, very successfully, relying on his talent. Later, he often said that this made him think.
In 1969, Mustafa went to the Croatian National Theater where he remained until his retirement in 2019. He always said that he was very frivolous until he was thirty. He relied on talent and did very little. That has changed.
In his thirties, Mustafa realized that to achieve a memorable role, he had to work hard! He would warn young actors that the role should be rehearsed for a long time so that it seems that the actor performs it on stage with ease. Among his colleagues, he was later recognized as a good worker who constantly insisted on improving his roles!
He played in famous films such as "Father on a business trip", "Cyclops", "General", but also in cult series such as "The Great Mist", "Nikola Tesla", "Beggar and Sons". He directed several plays, the most famous of which are: "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", "Balkan Spy" and "Hasanaginica". However, the role that marked his career was that of the humorous and always sarcastic Izet Fazlinović in the series "Crazy, Confused, Normal".
Mustafa did not like being compared to Izeta Fazlinović and always warned that he was very different from him! But he was able to conciliately conclude that in life you are always marked by something that you think should not mark you. He spent as much as nine years of his life filming the cult series, and in the end he gave up because he concluded that he had already become tired.
Mustafa had to be many things in his life, a madman, a murderer, an executioner, a football player... He said about how he played all these diverse roles so well: - An actor has his inner drawers. And who knows what's inside of us and what we can achieve. – And the actor's "drawer" was apparently full. She hid talent and perseverance and love for the craft. And that's why we miss Mustafa on the scene so much today.
