Broken fate of Vitaly Yushkov: How a Soviet actor, after emigrating to Israel, ended up in a homeless shelter

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

At first, his acting path was quite successful: having made his debut in the film "The Collapse of Engineer Garin", Vitaly Yushkov continued to act in films, often getting the main roles, and performed on the stage of the Leningrad BDT. He was one of the most beautiful and promising Soviet actors, the famous actress Elena Safonova became his first wife, but the marriage with her soon fell apart, in the theater he was ranked among the "failed generation of BDT artists", and the audience today is unlikely to remember numerous film roles. In Search of a Better Destiny in the 1990s the actor emigrated to Israel, only there a hopeless and bleak future awaited him …

Little is known about his childhood and adolescence - he grew up in the post-war period, and his life was not much different from the life of his peers. Since his school years, Vitaly was fond of amateur performances. In the late 1960s. he graduated from the faculty of directing folk theaters of the Institute of Culture. N. Krupskaya, and then continued his studies at LGITMiK. It seemed to many that his acting career began just brilliantly - the young artist was accepted into the troupe of the Leningrad BDT, then, in the early 1970s, he began acting in films. However, in fact, this did not bring success to Yushkov.

During this period, the main director of the BDT was the famous Georgy Tovstonogov. Many young actors dreamed of working with him, but at that time a group of famous artists had already formed in the theater, who received all the main roles, and the youth remained out of work for years. Vitaly Yushkov was involved in several performances of Tovstonogov, but only from time to time - more often he was offered roles by other directors. Later, Yushkov's peers from this troupe, like himself, were called the failed generation of BDT artists: having good creative potential, they never got a chance to realize it.

Yushkov tried to compensate for the failures in the theater in the cinema. The very first role in Leonid Kvinikhidze's film "The Collapse of Engineer Garin" brought him his first popularity and recognition. After that, other directors drew attention to the young actor, he began to actively act in films. The cinematic path of Vitaly Yushkov was more successful than the theatrical one. His spectacular appearance and type in the 1970s - 1980s. turned out to be relevant and in demand, but most directors exploited only one role - a positive, “correct” hero without flaws, which is why the images often looked schematic and implausible.

In 1977, while filming The Zatsepin Family, Vitaly Yushkov met a young actress Elena Safonova. She was 20 years old, he was 25. She seemed to him an unattainable beauty, smart, charming and talented. Not counting on success, the actor began to look after her, and she reciprocated. For his sake, Safonova moved from Moscow to Leningrad. In the same 1977 they got married. However, almost immediately after they began to live together, problems appeared in the family. The spouses spent little time together, and if this happened, they immediately quarreled. It turned out that the spouses had few common interests and topics for conversation. Elena was completely focused on her career, Vitaly did the housework, cooked food, trying to please his wife, but she remained indifferent to these manifestations of attention. Later, Yushkov said that Safonova had a very difficult character, and it was difficult for him to adapt to him.

The actor did not find support in the family, and at that time he needed it. He dreamed of children, to which Elena answered with a categorical refusal. She told him that she did not plan to become a mother at all - as time had shown, Safonova was simply too young and not ready to have children, besides, she feared that long pauses in her career for a young actress could be disastrous.

Due to the lack of creativity and misunderstanding in the family, Yushkov began to drink. In 1982, Safonova went back to Moscow, and the next year the actors divorced. The divorce was difficult - the court decided the dispute over the division of property. Subsequently, Vitaly said that he and Elena "". But the actress later admitted: "".

After their separation, Elena Safonova's film career quickly went up - in 1985 she played the main role in the film "Winter Cherry", which brought her all-Union popularity and recognition. She became a real star, but her ex-husband's everything was much sadder. In the 1980s. he was filmed less and less, appearing on the screens mainly in television performances, and in the era of Perestroika he was completely left without roles.

In 1991, he had to leave the theater, there was no work in the cinema, and the actor, who at that time was married for the second time, decided to emigrate to Israel with his family. There was no question of continuing an acting career there. He had a chance to be on the set after the move only once, when in 1995 he was invited to the joint project of Russia, Belarus and China "Red Cherry". But on this his cinematic path ended.

Having settled in Israel in the city of Ashdod, Yushkov got a job at a chemical plant. He had two children, at first everything went well. And only at the end of 2020 it became known that in fact the life of the actor in exile was completely destroyed. Over the years, he never learned the language, which prevented him from finding a good job and forced him to work as a janitor and loader, did not make new friends and continued to drink a lot. Because of his addiction, Yushkov lost his job, family, and home, finding himself on the street.

It turned out that his wife called the police several times, complaining about her husband's inappropriate behavior, and then filed for divorce. Vitaly spent two months behind bars, and he was forbidden to approach the house where he lived. At first he lived in a basement, then he ended up in a homeless shelter and a nursing home. A social worker who communicated with him in Israel told about his sad fate.

The ex-wife of the actor has achieved noticeable success in the profession, but in her personal life she had to go through many tests: How Elena Safonova repeated the fate of her heroine from "Winter Cherry".