The tragic fate of Lelya: Why the hero of the famous movie fairy tales disappeared from the screens and died in obscurity

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

Name Alexey Katyshev today he hardly speaks to anyone about something, but his face is well known to many - he played the main roles in beautiful movie fairy tales "Fire, Water and Copper Pipes", "Barbara-Beauty, Long Braid", "Spring Tale" and others. Girls all over the country sighed about the blue-eyed blond Andrei, the fishing son, and Lele, but soon their idol disappeared from the screens forever. His further fate was dramatic.

Alexey Katyshev got into the cinema quite by accident - he was not going to become an actor. He was born in 1949 near Donetsk, and soon the family moved to Yalta due to health problems with his father. There Alexey got a job as a sound engineer at the Yalta film studio. And then fate gave him a happy chance, which abruptly changed his life. Once the young man caught the eye of the famous director Alexander Rowe, and when he met him he exclaimed: ""

The appearance of the young Katyshev really was like that of a fairy-tale prince, he was invited to audition, but he did not make any impression on the members of the state commission. Alexei had neither professional training nor outstanding talents. However, Rowe stood his ground: either he was shooting this actor, or he refused to shoot altogether. Katyshev impressed him so much with his amazing purity and spontaneity that this compensated for the lack of acting skills - this is what a hero should be, personifying the forces of good in fairy tales.

After the make-up artists worked with Katyshev, he turned into a real Ivanushka from children's fairy tales: his hair was dyed wheat, curls were curled - and soon no one doubted that in front of him was the main character from the movie fairy tales “Fire, Water and copper pipes "and" Barbara-beauty ". Rowe continued to patronize his ward - even when he was drafted into the army, the director achieved his transfer to the capital and continued filming.

The meteoric rise of Alexei Katyshev ended at its very peak. When the whole country knew him by sight and thousands of girls sent him letters with confessions, he suddenly disappeared from the screens. He played his last role in 1973 in the film "About Vitya, about Masha and the Marines", and no one else heard anything about the actor. Lack of information gave rise to many rumors - it was said that Katyshev drank himself to death, went to prison or died in a drunken fight. In fact, to some extent, such rumors were not unfounded.

Alexander Rowe repeatedly offered Katyshev to move from Yalta to the capital, to graduate from a theater university. He even promised to help him with admission. But just at that moment the young actor got married, he had children. The trip had to be postponed several times. And when he finally got ready, the director died suddenly, and suddenly it turned out that Katyshev was no longer needed in the capital. At the film studio, they made it clear to him that he was filming only thanks to the patronage of Rowe, and he should not count on new roles. And this was the end of his film career, he had to return to Yalta.

Katyshev needed to take care of his wife and children, and he graduated from a driving school and got a job as a driver - he delivered milk to a sanatorium. There he worked for 19 years, until the enterprise went bankrupt during the years of perestroika. Katyshev was again unemployed. He began to drink, and during another drinking binge with friends he got into a story that almost cost him his freedom: while he was asleep in a state of strong intoxication, his friends raped a girl.

Katyshev said: "". And although his guilt was never proven, he earned a reputation as a rowdy, drunkard and rapist, although this had nothing to do with him - all his acquaintances spoke of his good-natured and harmless character.

The Katyshev family also soon disintegrated. He was left homeless and unemployed. The last chance to make a life that had gone downhill was a meeting with a longtime acquaintance from the Yalta film studio. With Marina, the former actor lived in a tiny room in a film studio hostel, but thanks to the care of his wife, he quit drinking and got a job as an auxiliary worker in a rest home. However, this did not last long - problems with money and alcohol soon returned.

In November 2006, a man who had been severely beaten by teenagers was taken to one of the Yalta hospitals. In addition to numerous bruises, doctors diagnosed him with a pathology of the heart and lungs in a neglected state - he never paid due attention to his health. For a long time, no one could believe that this was not yet an old man, who looked like a man without a definite abode - the former actor Alexei Katyshev. He spent a little more than a day in intensive care and died without regaining consciousness. He was only 57 years old.

The acting film career did not work out for Katyshev's partner on the set: Barbara beauty on the screen and in life.