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Video: Why Konstantin Raikin believes that all his life "hangs in the balance": 71 years without the right to make a mistake
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
On July 8, the famous actor and theatrical figure, artistic director of the Satyricon Theater, People's Artist of the Russian Federation, Konstantin Raikin, will be 71 years old. Until the age of 40, he was known to most viewers only as a character actor and the son of the legendary Arkady Raikin. It took him a lot of effort to prove to everyone around him that he can follow in the footsteps of his father, but in his own way, and today they speak of him as a talented leader and an independent creative unit. Why, at the same time, does the artist continue to doubt himself and why does he constantly “eat” himself?
Loud surname
Konstantin grew up in an acting family, and the actor was not only his famous father Arkady Raikin, but also his mother, Ruth Ioffe, who performed on the stage of the Leningrad Theater of Miniatures and Variety, created by her husband. Parents often went on tour, and Kostya and his older sister Katya were left in the care of their grandmother and nanny. But at the same time, the children grew up in an atmosphere of love and care and never felt a lack of attention from their parents.
The father never raised his voice to him and preferred to raise his son by his own example. As soon as Kostya was guilty of something - Arkady Raikin had very calm conversations with him, but from this quiet intonation and gaze, Kostya's soul sank into his heels. Later, he called these childhood memories the most frightening.
During his school years, Konstantin gravitated towards the exact sciences, studied at the physics and mathematics boarding school at the Leningrad State University and planned to enter the biology department. At the same time, from childhood, he was very artistic and after graduating from school, secretly from his parents, he decided to try his hand at acting. During the entrance exams at Leningrad State University, he suddenly rushed to Moscow, while his parents were on tour in Czechoslovakia, and seized the admission committee of the Shchukin school by storm. Upon learning that Konstantin was accepted there on the first attempt, the father was not surprised - on the contrary, he stated that he was confident in the choice of his son even before he made it.
During his studies, Konstantin first felt the full weight of his loud surname - at first he was called "Raikin's son" and closely followed all his mistakes and failures, and his successes were evaluated only in comparison with the famous father. However, no one denied that he was not occupied with talent, hard work, and self-discipline - Konstantin himself did not let himself go and was himself the strictest judge.
"Satyricon" by inheritance
After graduation, Raikin was invited to Sovremennik by Galina Volchek, and he devoted 10 years of his life to this theater. But when the Theater of Variety Miniatures, the brainchild of his father, moved to Moscow from Leningrad, Konstantin moved there and helped him create the Satyricon Theater on this basis. A year after his father passed away, in 1988, he became the head of this theater and since then has been its permanent artistic director.
Even at the beginning of his career, Konstantin admitted: "". However, this is exactly how the majority of viewers up to 40 years old perceived him. At the age of 19, he made his film debut and very soon they started talking about him as a bright character actor. The peak of his popularity came in the 1970s, when the films Much Ado About Nothing, At Home Among Strangers, A Stranger Among Friends and Truffaldino from Bergamo were released. At the same time, both the directors and the audience presented him only in a comedy role and continued to constantly compare him with his father.
Konstantin Raikin became the artistic director of "Satyricon" at the age of 37. He no longer had the support of his father, but even after the death of Arkady Raikin, the whispers behind his son's back continued that he owed all his successes exclusively to his father. He never had the right to make a mistake, but this period became a turning point in his life. And he managed to prove both to all doubters and to himself that he chose this path not by chance. After Roman Viktyuk staged the sensational play The Handmaids in Satyricon, they started talking about Raikin as a serious theater director.
All my life "in the balance"
After his triumph in cinema in the 1970s. Konstantin could have built a brilliant film career, but the theater has always remained the main business of his life, and fame was not an end in itself. The directors bombarded him with new proposals, but he refused most of them because of his employment in the theater. And although very soon he convinced everyone that he could be an independent creative unit, his father always remained an internal tuning fork for him. Konstantin has repeatedly admitted that, often doubting the correctness of his decisions, he wondered: "What would the Pope say about this?" Although his tastes in the theater did not coincide with his father's, as well as their views on the development of Satyricon, Konstantin has no doubts that today his father would come to their performances with pleasure and would certainly appreciate them.
Both in the theater and in the cinema, Raikin brilliantly coped not only with comedic, but also with complex dramatic roles, but at the same time, in any role he preferred to appear on the theatrical stage, where he felt contact with the audience and received a feedback. The theater became his priesthood, service and vocation. He said: "".
In his years, Konstantin Raikin, it would seem, achieved everything that could only be dreamed of: he successfully realized himself both as an actor, and as a leader, and as a teacher who raised more than one generation of talented youth. But at the same time, internal doubts do not let him go to this day. In one of the interviews, the artist admitted: "".
Nevertheless, today he has already formulated for himself the rules, which he has been trying to follow for many years: "".
The role in the film "Truffaldino from Bergamo" became the brightest in his film career, but many difficulties arose on the set: Why Natalia Gundareva was against participating in the filming of Konstantin Raikin.
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