Russian Personalities

People well-known in art, sport, film, fashion

Category Archive: Movies and theatre

Igor Vernik – Russian actor, TV presenter

Igor Vernik

Igor Vernik – Russian actor, TV presenter


Russian actor and popular TV presenter Igor Vernik was born on October 11, 1963 in Moscow into a family of Union Radio director, People’s Artist of Russia, and music teacher. In his childhood Igor studied at music school.
Vernik successfully entered the Moscow Art Theater and after graduation he was invited to work at the Moscow Art Theatre. Igor has played in King Lear, The Pickwick Club, The Pit, Tartuffe etc. Besides, he has starred in more than a dozen films. But he became popular among viewers as a presenter of different television shows. He took part in the TV program It’s Easy on TVC channel, then there were such programs as For You, Nightlife Cities In The World, Seventh Sense, Good Morning, Saturday Night with Star, Rec-time.
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Maria Kozhevnikova – Russian actress, politician

Maria Kozhevnikova

Maria Kozhevnikova – Russian actress, politician


Maria Kozhevnikova is a Russian actress, member of Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party. You know, she represents Siberian city Tomsk in Russian parliament.
Kozhevnikova, star of the television series Univer, was Russian Playboy’s cover girl in 2009 and was voted the country’s sexiest woman by Maxim magazine.
Maria was born on November 14, 1984 in Moscow into the family of Soviet ice hockey player Alexander Kozhevnikov, two-time Olympic champion and Merited Master of Sports. Mother of the future actress and politician worked as an English teacher.
Pretty girl was born in the Soviet Union, but grew up in Europe, because her father, hockey player, played in England, Sweden and Switzerland. The family traveled with him. In England and Sweden, Maria immediately made friends with classmates, but in Switzerland, there were many problems. The Swiss did not like immigrants and the girl had to fight with bullies.
Several times Maria was literally on the verge of death. 11-year-old girl was incorrectly diagnosed with peritonitis, interns took her to surgery and removed healthy appendix. The next time Maria was training for several hours without a break and fainted. Falling down she hit her head badly and broke her arm. A few years ago Kozhevnikova miraculously survived after car-truck crash.
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Maksim Averin, Russian actor

Maxim Averin

Maksim Averin, Russian actor


Maksim Averin is a Russian film and theater actor, who became popular after the main role in the television series Glukhar.
The boy was born on November 26, 1975 in Moscow. His mother was a simple dressmaker. And his father worked as a set designer at Mosfilm, but his lifelong dream was to become an actor. And Maxim fulfilled his father’s dream. The boy chose the profession of an actor in early childhood. At the age of six he debuted on the silver screen. The father took him to Makhachkala, where the movie The Adventures of Count Nevzorov (1982) was filmed. Little Maxim played a cameo role. 9-year-old actor performed in the play Brandenburg Gate in the Theater of Miniatures. At school he was interested only in literature and history. Once in the second grade Maxim refused to write a math test and said that he did not need it at drama school.
In 1997 he graduated from the Shchukin Theatre School.
In the Satyricon Theatre he played in Macbeth, Richard III, King Lear, Lion in Winter, Hamlet, Hedda Gabler and others.
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Kirill Safonov, Russian actor

Kirill Safonov

Kirill Safonov, Russian actor


Kirill Safonov is a Russian actor, known mostly for his roles in television series, including Tatiana Day (2007), Bear Corner (2009), Conditions of Contract (2011), Brief Course of Happy Life.
The boy was born on June 21, 1973 in Ermakovskoe village, Krasnoyarsk Krai. Later the family moved to Ukrainian city Lvov, where the future actor spent his childhood and school years.
When the boy was 12 years old, his parents divorced. The mother, Russian language and literature teacher, raised three children alone. Kirill has two elder sisters. Safonov always wanted to be an actor. His first role was in a school play.
In the early 1990s, Kirill returned to Krasnoyarsk, where he entered the Krasnoyarsk Institute of Arts. But there he studied for a year and transferred to the Russian Academy of Theatre Arts (GITIS). In 1997, the actor did not play a monologue and was expelled from the institute. After leaving GITIS, Safonov found work at the Mayakovsky Theater, then at the Stanislavsky Theater.
In 1999, Kirill began to work at the Israeli theater Gesher in Tel Aviv.
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Igor Talkov – rock musician

igor talkov

Igor Talkov – rock musician


Talented poet and musician Igor Talkov was born on November 4, 1956 in a poor family. His parents met in prison. The singer came from a noble family (his uncles served as officers of the tsarist army), and the father and the mother of the musician were repressed. They met in the village of Orlov-Rozovo, Kemerovo region. Their first son Vladimir (Igor’s elder brother) was born there. After rehabilitation, family was sent to Schekino (Tula region) and they weren’t allowed to move somewhere. So, Schekino became the birthplace of the singer, rock musician, poet and actor.
Talkov began to write poems studying in elementary school. He was a self-taught musician, played the guitar, the piano, the bass guitar, the violin and the drums. It is interesting that he didn’t play his most beloved musical instrument, saxophone, but adored listening to it.
He was a very open and sociable person, but he hadn’t real friends.
His life was short but very intense – as if anticipating an early death, he was always in a hurry, wanted to make as much as possible.
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Famous Russian nannies

Famous Russian nannies

Famous Russian nannies

Russian nanny. Her image can be found in the works and memories of many famous Russian people. Sometimes becoming a full-fledged member of the family, she always stays in the shade of her pupils. Depriving herself of the own family happiness the nanny gave all the love and affection to her pupil, becoming the closest person to a child, who had lack of parental love because of etiquette rules. It was the nanny who formed the soul of her pupils. She could not teach good manners, did not know a foreign language, but she did more important things; she instilled a love and respect for the common man, Russian culture, the word.
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Sergei Stolyarov, Soviet cinema superstar

Sergei Stolyarov, Soviet cinema superstar

Soviet cinema superstar


Sergei Stolyarov was a real superstar of the USSR in the first half of the 20th century. He was an actor, who created unique images of Alyosha Popovich, Sadko, Nikita Kozhemyaka and Soviet submarine commanders and pilots.
Nobody knew the exact date of Stolyarov’s birth. He was born in 1911 into the family of gamekeeper Dmitry Stolyarov. Three years later the head of the family went to the First World War, where he died. After the October revolution, the family was on the verge of poverty and hunger. So the mother decided to send her sons to the City of Bread – Tashkent. Sergei’s metric was lost and he decided to have birthday on November 1. Only at the beginning of the two thousandth historians were able to establish the correct date – July 17 (or the Fourth of July, old style), 1911.
On the road to Tashkent young Stolyarov fell ill with typhoid fever and was sent to orphanage in Kursk, where Sergei joined the drama club. After moving to Moscow in the late 20s, the future actor worked on the Kiev railway, devoting his spare time to drama school for the workers at the Moscow Art Theater, organized by actor Alexei Dikiy. There Stolyarov was advised to enter the Moscow Art Theatre.
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