Alexander Demyanenko: the last love of the people's intellectual

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

His Shurik was loved and known by the whole country. But Alexander Sergeevich Demyanenko was really known, probably, only by his second wife, Lyudmila, with whom he lived for almost a quarter of a century. It was she who was able to make him happy and give that peace of mind and peace that the actor dreamed of.

Personal drama of the great actor

Alexander Sergeevich Demyanenko, having played the role of Shurik, found himself hostage to the situation. Everyone saw in him an absurd and awkward bespectacled student who constantly finds himself in difficult situations, and then heroically overcomes them. He was so organic in this role that the viewer completely identified the popular hero Gaidai with the actor who played him. In fact, Alexander Demyanenko was the complete opposite of Shurik. A deep, thoughtful, serious and very vulnerable actor, he really did not like his character, which in fact ruined his life.

He was an unusually reserved and very reserved person. If in the cinema and on the stage, his characters were seething with emotions, then in life it was very difficult to bring him to any outbursts.

I'm in love

Alexander Sergeevich met his first wife Marina Sklyarova during his school years. They studied together in a drama circle and dreamed of a big stage and nationwide fame. Common interests, common goals eventually led to marriage. But they did not succeed in a full-fledged family. No. They didn't quarrel. He just called once and said that he would not come home again. He just met someone who understood him at the age of 37.

Alexander Sergeevich met Lyusya, as her friends called Lyudmila Akimovna, at the dubbing studio. They had to spend a lot of time together at work. Of course, I also had to communicate.

Alexander Demyanenko was silent in life. Very modest, tactful, very restrained in the expression of emotions and feelings. And he talked to Lyudmila. She somehow immediately endeared him to her. This amazing woman never associated him with Shurik, she saw in front of her a deep, serious and very lonely person.

Their communication was purely businesslike, but both of them already knew that there was something more in common between them. When Alexander was especially sad one day, she advised him to fall in love. And he simply, without fuss, replied that he was already in love. Into her.

Happiness to be yourself

They just started living together. He affectionately called his beloved Lyudochka or Ludonishche and served her sandwiches in bed. He was able to build relationships with the daughter of Lyudmila Akimovna in such a way that she still remembers him only in a positive way. Angelica Nevolina tries not to give interviews about him, remembering that Alexander Sergeevich did not like publicity very much. Daughter Lyudmila was not very interesting to him in childhood, and he simply did not try to interfere in her life. But when she became an actress, they became unusually close.

He felt warm and comfortable in his new home. He just could live, be himself, do what he loved and love. They felt so good together that they simply forgot that they were not scheduled. Only sometimes in hotels they did not want to be accommodated in one room, motivating them with the absence of a stamp in their passport.

Only 12 years later, he was able to go through the entire painful divorce procedure and breathe easy. True, immediately after that, he finally took his beloved down the aisle. He had very few friends. Alexander Sergeevich loved solitude. And he could not stand his enduring popularity. He did not like when he was recognized on the streets, he tried to be unnoticed everywhere. He was offended by recognizing him as Shurik, and unwillingness to remember the amazing dramatic works in the films "Gloomy River" or "Peace to the Incoming."

Lyudmila Akimovna perfectly understood the emotional experiences of her husband, and therefore simply tried to be near. When he locked himself in his office for a long time, she ran to him every 15 minutes just to see his own face. Or ask something completely unimportant. And hear his absent-minded answer.

A quarter century of love

He suffered from his own lack of demand. But he never gave up. He dubbed films and cartoons, participated in theatrical productions, dreamed of new roles in films. The most important thing is that Alexander Sergeevich was happy with a woman who once accepted him with one small suitcase. All the acquaintances noted his transformation. A closed, even unsociable person in the presence of his wife was touchingly tender, often hugged her, casually touched her hand.

When friends and girlfriends of Lyudmila Akimovna came to their house, who did not look at him as at Shurik, but saw him as an intelligent man and an interesting interlocutor, Alexander Sergeevich fully revealed himself. He was comfortable in everything that his beloved, his Lyudochka, had to do with.

He could not be called a cheerful or sociable person. It was too deep. He read a lot, it was almost impossible to see him without a book. But when Lyudochka entered his room, he blossomed. He smiled and beamed with happiness. She made him forget about problems, creative throwings, doubts. She was there. And it gave him the strength to live.

No one even knew that he had heart problems. He really did not want to attract attention to himself, he did not want to burden anyone. He treated ulcers, but before each performance he put on a heart patch and secretly put nitroglycerin under his tongue.

When he was persuaded to go to the hospital, it turned out that he had suffered a heart attack. And even in this situation, he did not show Lyudochka his pain in any way. He simply and casually said that he had a heart attack. And he continued reading his book.

He left in August 1999, only a few days before the scheduled surgery. There is no photograph on his grave. Lyudochka, who understood him like no one else, said that he was always under the sights of the eyes, so let him take a break from them. She outlived her beloved by only six years and went after him to a place where nothing could separate them.

Alexandru Demyanenko did not find a person who understands him right away, like another famous actor Mikhail Derzhavin.