A Modern Immigrant Finds the Spotlight

The actress and author Dagmara Dominczyk in Brooklyn for a reading
from her new book, “The Lullaby of Polish Girls.”

The pirogi were warm, the honey-cherry liqueur was uncorked and therefore the muggy basement of Word, a bookstore in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, was standing-room-only. 

Dagmara Dominczyk, an actress acquainted from films like “Higher Ground” and tv shows like “person of interest, ” was around the time of the recent polish neighborhood to celebrate the publication of “The Lullaby of Polish Girls, ” a novel that mirrors her own experience currently being a polish émigré. It's received sturdy advance buzz.

Upon the sidewalk, middle-age women who may have known her as Miss Polonia of Greenpoint, 1992, known as out, “Dagmarka, stand here, we take photo now, ” in thick polish accents. Ms. Dominczyk, clutching a cigarette in one hand, her hunk-actor husband, Patrick Wilson, in another, flashed a Hollywood smile.

“Those who understand me understand I really like to write down, ” Ms. Dominczyk, 36, aforesaid. “Those who understand me to a tiny degree bit understand I’m an actress. Those who don’t understand me understand I’m married to Patrick Wilson. ”

In a few ways, hers could be a classic immigrant tale of bootstrap success. However there’s a younger sister, too, Marika, an actress blessed when using the same piercing eyes and sculptured lips, who is additionally married to some recognizable actor, Scott Foley.

Along, the two main sisters — together with their acerbic Eastern European wit, their small-screen-idol husbands as well as their impossibly high cheekbones — are getting fixtures upon the red carpet and in tabloid magazines. Suppose of those clearly as the modern, boho-brooklyn version on your Hungarian-born Gabor sisters.

“I appear like there was continuously one thing in me or a meant for a lot of bigger life, ” Ms. Dominczyk ( pronounced “Doh-MEAN-chick” ) aforesaid.

The Poland of her early childhood, but, was no place for Hollywood dreams. She was born in 1976 in Kielce, a hardscrabble town where her father, Miroslaw Dominczyk, was a native leader for solidarity, the trade union led by Lech Walesa.

His glory was short lived. In the midst on your night on Dec. 13, 1981, police burst through their front door with clubs. Dagmara, then 5, recalled watching due to window as her father was hauled away because we are part of a white van to prison. Eleven months later, the family was exiled and terminated up within the whole Glenwood Houses, a public-housing project in Canarsie, Brooklyn. Their mother, Aleksandra, cleaned houses. Miroslaw eventually toiled currently being a cabdriver, then a building superintendent.

Finally it was arduous watching her father, a crusader back Home, grow embittered as he dragged garbage towards the curb. “I wished to take smart upon the family name,” she aforesaid. “I wished to leave a legacy. ”

The chances of your appeared remote, living because we are part of a housing project deep in Brooklyn. However at age 14, Dagmara earned a coveted spot within the whole drama program at LA Guardia Arts your childhood, the so-called “fame” faculty, where fellow students included Adrien Brody and Adrian Grenier.

“She was terribly studious, ” Marika recalled of Dagmara. “She would get up early and ride sixty minutes to your childhood. I barely more than a little hung when using the neighborhood crew and played spades throughout the milk crate. ”

Dagmara’s drive led her to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, where she would meet Mr. Wilson, an all-American Paul Newman type who would prolong to Broadway and star clearly as the Mormon in HBO’s “Angels in America. ” The two main fell away from touch after college, however Ms. Dominczyk’s dalliance with famous actors was no more than just beginning.

Her big break came in 2002, when she landed the female lead within the whole Hollywood remake of “The Count of Monte Cristo. ” Back with her $200, 000 paycheck, she and Marika, who had been modeling, rented an apartment in Greenpoint and set about blowing her windfall as quickly as is possible, writing checks to friends and family in Poland and New York, but in addition partying alongside the Leonardo Dicaprio entourage at clubs like lot 61. The bookish Dagmara was suddenly hanging out with Edward Norton, the sisters aforesaid, and carousing directly into wee hours.

“All of the sudden, there she was by having beer but a cigarette, ” Marika recalled. “I thought I'd been the bad one. ”

Though Dagmara was earning positive notices currently being a serious actress, the sisters shared a rough overlap when using the Gabor sisters, Eva and Zsa Zsa, who were tabloid staples within the whole ’60s and ’70s : they will were 2 sassy, charismatic, Eastern European man-traps who would become barely as famous for whom they will married as for whatever they achieved on-screen ( unlike the Gabor sisters, but, they will are famous for no more than one marriage apiece ). AS when using the Gabor sisters, there is additionally a third Dominczyk sister, Veronika, 27, that is beginning to gather screen credits herself.

Dagmara reconnected with Mr. Wilson in 2004 and married him future year. 2 years later, Marika, who turned heads within the whole film “The 40-Year-Old Virgin, ” married Scott Foley, the square-jawed actor from “Felicity. ”

The older sisters had for getting applied to being semifamous in their very own right, semifamous as celebrity spouses. Generally, Dagmara finds herself taking on Mr. Wilson’s admirers head on.

When her husband appeared because we are part of a graphic sex scene within the whole second season of HBO’s “Girls, ” one fan tweeted that no chiseled hunk like Patrick Wilson would aspire to a non-supermodel like Lena Dunham. Dagmara fired back : “Funny, his wife could be a size 10, muffin top & all, & he does her barely fine, ” because we are part of a twitter message picked up by celebrity blogs. “That’s my dad in me, ” Ms. Dominczyk aforesaid. “He continuously aforesaid, ‘we came of this country, its freedom of speech, and I am going make use of it. ’ ”

Lately, the pace has settled down, as each sisters have balanced career with motherhood. For the very last few years, Dagmara aforesaid, the glittering life was largely confined to children’s play dates with actor friends like Liv Tyler at her three-story colonial in Montclair, N. J., whereas finishing her novel.

“Lullaby, ” that Publisher’s Weekly known as a “gossipy, feisty debut, ” may be a coming-of-age tale of 3 young polish women, one an immigrant daughter of the dissident in New York, brimming with teary epiphanies, betrayal and love, in addition just like the grit of each New York and Kielce. “Girls” by having polish accent. “Going returning to that world, ” she same, “that was my way for you to keeping it real. ”

The very same can be same for her debut reading in Greenpoint. At one purpose, Dagmara felt overcome with emotion as family, friends and therefore the neighborhood “aunties” showered her with accolades, thus she ducked along the corner to produce a cigarette. Marika soon joined her. They will had traveled an extended manner coming from the Flatbush Avenue stop inside the No. 2 train, however there they will were once more, alone along.

It felt just like a moment of arrival, Dagmara recalled : “It was not us against the world. ”