Velimir "Bata" Živojinović (Serbian Cyrillic: Велимир "Бата" Живојиновић) (born 5 June 1933) is a Serbian actor and politician.

Biographie

Živojinović was born in the village of Koraćica under the Kosmaj mountain, near Mladenovac, Serbia (then Kingdom of Yugoslavia). After graduating from acting schools in Niš and Novi Sad, he enrolled at the Drama Academy in Belgrade.

Velimir Živojinović preferred acting in theatre to acting on screen, and made his screen debut in 1955 film Pesma sa Kumbare was the beginning of an incredibly prolific silver screen career. Bata Živojinović's played both heroes and villains and switched between leading and supporting roles. The zenith of his popularity came with WW2-themed action films in the 1970s. One of his best known films from that period was Valter brani Sarajevo (English translation: Walter Defends Sarajevo), which gained major success in China.

He was also known for his close friendship with the Croatian actor Boris Dvornik. In 1991 Živojinović and Dvornik renounced each other in a series of open letters, which was a gesture often seen as symbolic of the breakup of Yugoslavia. In 2004 it was reported that the two men tried to reconcile. In 2006, the two men publicly reconciled on TV via a video link between Split and Belgrade. The actor said that "In the last few years there hasn't been hatred between us", and Dvornik completed the sentence "only a misunderstanding".

In 1990 he was elected for the Serbian Parliament, as a member of Slobodan Milošević's Socialist Party of Serbia. He was a candidate in the september-october 2002 presidential election, receiving 3.27% of the popular vote.