Unfinished romance with cinema: Why one of the first Soviet beauties Tatyana Lavrova remained an actress of one role

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

11 years ago, on May 16, 2007, a Soviet actress, People's Artist of the RSFSR passed away Tatiana Lavrova … Her departure for most of the audience went unnoticed - recently she almost did not act in films and did not appear on the stage of the theater. She called herself "an underplayed actress" - her only triumph in cinema was her role in the film "Nine Days of One Year". In her personal life, too, everything was not easy: fate also gave her happy chances - with Yevgeny Urbansky, Oleg Dal, Andrei Voznesensky - and immediately took them away.

Her further path was predetermined from birth: Tatiana was born into a family of famous cameramen Yevgeny Andrikanis and Galina Pyshkova. Since childhood, she dreamed of theater and cinema, so after graduating from school she applied to all theatrical universities in Moscow. She was admitted to a studio school at the Moscow Art Theater and was advised to take a pseudonym instead of the surname Andrikanis: "". Tatiana asked her classmates to write several options on a piece of paper and poked at one of them at random. So she became Lavrova.

The aspiring actress was lucky enough to get the role of Nina Zarechnaya in The Seagull, and since then her theatrical career has taken off. In 1959, she made her film debut in the film "Song of Koltsov", and 2 years later she played one of her most iconic roles, which became her trademark - this was the main role in the film "Nine Days of One Year". Her partners on the set were Innokenty Smoktunovsky and Alexei Batalov. In such a company, the girl felt insecure and did not understand why the director Mikhail Romm chose her, young and inexperienced. To her question, he replied: "".

The film won many prizes at international film festivals, according to the results of a survey of readers of the magazine "Soviet Screen" Tatyana Lavrova was recognized as the best actress in 1962, the directors bombarded her with new proposals. She refused many of them - after working with Romm, these roles seemed frivolous to her. She later admitted: "".

From the Moscow Art Theater Lavrova soon moved to Sovremennik, where she played her best roles in the performances Two on a Swing, Don't Part With Your Loved Ones, The Cherry Orchard, The Seagull and At the Bottom. Despite the great success on the stage, the actress was never fully satisfied with herself and believed that her best role was still to come: "".

“Waiting for the blue bird” she remained in the cinema all her life, unaware that one of her first films would remain an unsurpassed creative peak for her. In the theater, roles were offered less and less, and from the cinema, as she put it, her "". She called herself an "underplayed actress." She starred in the films "All the King's Men", "The Flight of Mr. McKinley", "Fact of the Biography", "Departure Delayed", "Midlife Crisis", "Movies about Cinema", but none of these works repeated her success. in the film "Nine Days of One Year".

In her personal life, the actress was also haunted by failures: the famous actor Yevgeny Urbansky became her first husband, but their life together did not last long. Having learned about her husband's betrayal, Tatiana left, and in 1965 Urbansky died while performing a difficult stunt on the set. In the same year, Lavrova married Oleg Dal, but they lived together for only six months - the actor drank heavily, besides, both spouses were distinguished by difficult and quarrelsome characters. Many of her acquaintances and colleagues believed that it was because of this that she was also deprived of many roles.

Actress Lyudmila Ivanova said about her: "". Vitaly Wolf wrote about her character: "". Indeed, her demands were often overstated, but first of all she demanded the impossible from herself.

Lavrova did not say anything about her third husband, she only said that he was not from an acting environment. She also admitted that she had many years of romance with a "famous poet" and "a famous director." This poet was Andrei Voznesensky, who dedicated poetry to the actress, but did not dare to marry her - both at that time had other families. According to her, she appreciated talent most of all in men. When her admirer Boris Khimichev showed himself poorly in the acting exam, she rejected him. The writer Vasily Aksenov called the actress a dangerous, impulsive and unpredictable woman. She had many fans, but in the end she was left alone.

In recent years, Lavrova admitted in an interview that she was left without roles in theater and cinema. She dreamed of filming with Stanislav Govorukhin, but these dreams never came true. The actress lamented: "". She could no longer go on stage due to health problems - doctors suspected she had bowel cancer, but she refused a serious examination. On May 16, 2007, Tatyana Lavrova's heart stopped.

They said that Andrei Voznesensky dedicated his famous poems to Tatyana Lavrova: "You Will Never Forget Me" - The magnificent duet of Karachentsov and Shanina from the rock opera "Juno and Avos".