Jana Synková was born during World War II in Prague, then the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.

Her maternal grandparents were well-known theatre personalities and she attended an acting club from an early age.

After the Ypsilon Theatre moved to Prague, more opportunities to work in film and television arose, so that she took on several supporting roles in the 1970s and 1980s.

In the 1990s, larger roles followed, for example, she played Aunt Kateřina in the 1994 film Saturnin, for whose performance she was nominated for the Czech Lion Awards as Best Supporting Actress.

In 2019 she was again nominated for the Czech Lion for Best Supporting Actress for the film Chata na prodej.