For his active stage career, he has been awarded a Drama Desk Award and has been nominated for three Tony Awards.
Ivanek was born in Ljubljana, PR Slovenia, FPR Yugoslavia, to the family of Ferdo Ivanek, originally from Varaždin, Croatia, and Vojka nee Šimić.[better source needed] In 1960, Željko, his mother and younger brother, Ivan, immigrated to Palo Alto, California, where his father was working as a research assistant at the Department of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. His mother also worked at Stanford University as a project manager.
After a two-year stay, in 1962, the family moved back to Slovenia for five years and then returned to Palo Alto in 1967. Having performed in numerous community theater plays in the San Francisco Bay Area, he graduated from Ellwood P. Cubberley High School in Palo Alto in 1975. Ivanek graduated from Yale University majoring in theater in 1978 and attended the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art afterward.

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