Education
Szadkowski attended Barnard College in New York City and went on to earn an Master of Fine Arts in acting from The A.R.T. Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard University/MXAT.
Szadkowski attended Barnard College in New York City and went on to earn an Master of Fine Arts in acting from The A.R.T. Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard University/MXAT.
Szadkowski also appeared on The Sopranos, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, and Guiding Light. She made her New York Stage debut in Nora Ephron and Delia Ephron"s Love, Loss, and What I Wore in which she appeared in a record-breaking five all-star casts. Her surname pronouced as "shad-kawv-skee".
She has worked in theater in New York City, regionally (directors Robert Woodruff, Sam Weisman, Marcus Stern), and in Warsaw and Moscow.
Zuzanna Szadkowski was born on October 22, 1978, in Warsaw, Poland, and moved to the United States when she was three. About her national identity and Polish accent she displays in Gossip Girl, she said, "I was born in Poland, so I am able to identify with her that way.
The accent is modeled after people in my own family, so hopefully I am doing it justice". Szadkowski and her family moved to Fort Wayne, Indiana, where she graduated from the R. Nelson Snider High School in 1997.
She attended Barnard College of Columbia University, and went on to earn a Master of Fine Arts in acting from the Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard University.
Szadkowski currently resides in Downtown Brooklyn. In 2010, she partnered with Sam Weisman to open an acting school, the Sam Weisman Studio, in New York City. Szadkowski made her acting debut in 2006, portraying two characters in Law & Order: Criminal Intent season 5 episode "Watch".
She would reprise these roles in the season 7 episode "Lonelyville".
In 2007, Szadkowski appeared in two episodes of The Sopranos, "Soprano Home Movies" and "Kennedy and Heidi". The same year, she was cast as Dorota Kishlovsky, the Polish maid of Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester), in the CW series Gossip Girl.
On April 20, 2009, The CW launched the Gossip Girl spin-off web series Chasing Dorota, consisting of six episodes. In 2012, Szadkowski appeared in three episodes of the soap opera Guiding Light.
She also appeared in the 2011 short film The Pilot Season Survival Guide and in the 2012 independent film Where Is Joel Baum?.