Nadja Tesich

Nadja Tesich (June 8, 1939 – February 20, 2014) was a writer, actor and activist. She was born in Yugoslavia and reared in East Chicago, Indiana. Best known for her starring role in Éric Rohmer's early film Nadja à Paris (1964), she was the author of the play After the Revolution (1980), followed by the novels Shadow Partisan, (1996), Native Land (1999) and Far From Vietnam (2012) and the literary memoir To Die in Chicago (2010). She was the writer and director of Film for my Son (1975) and wrote, acted or worked on numerous films, including Four Friends (1981), I Am the Cheese (1983) and The Love Lesson (1996). Her brother was Steve Tesich, the playwright, novelist and Academy Award-winning screenwriter of Breaking Away and other films. She taught film at Brooklyn College and was a lifelong political activist for workers and the oppressed people of the world.