Irina Apeksimova - 54: Why does the actress think that cinema has passed her

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

January 13 marks the 54th anniversary of the famous theater and film actress, director, singer, TV presenter, director of the Taganka Theater Irina Apeksimova. In the 1990s - early 2000s. several films with her participation were released annually, but in recent years she very rarely appears on the screens, although there are many proposals from directors. At social events, Apeksimova also rarely happens, and keeps aloof among colleagues. What secrets is kept by one of the most mysterious domestic actresses, and why she almost does not act in films - further in the review.

Probably, the love of art was in her blood. Irina Apeksimova was born in 1966 in Volgograd into a family of musicians: her father taught piano at the School of Arts, and her mother was a choirmaster at the Musical Comedy Theater. Her whole family was connected with the world of music: Larisa Dolina is Irina's second cousin, and her brother Valery is a well-known jazz composer and pianist in the USA. Parents dreamed that their daughter would also become a pianist and send her to a music school.

However, since her youth, Irina chose a different path for herself. When she was 13 years old, her parents divorced, and she and her mother moved to live with relatives in Odessa. There she got into a specialized class with a theatrical bias, and since then she has not imagined herself in another profession. Immediately after leaving school, she went to Moscow to enroll in a theater university. However, due to poor preparation and a strong Odessa dialect, the girl was not accepted at the Moscow Art Theater School, and she returned back. For a year, Apeksimova performed in the corps de ballet of the Odessa Academic Theater of Musical Comedy, and then made another attempt to enter the capital's university, but it ended in failure.

Perhaps such failures would have forced someone else to think about choosing another profession, but Apeksimova always had a strong character and iron willpower. She went to her father in Volgograd, where she performed at the local theater of musical comedy. At the same time, she did not worry about the fact that on stage at that time she was "the fifth in the third row": "". After she finally managed to get rid of the Odessa dialect, on the third attempt she was admitted to the Moscow Art Theater School, and even to the workshop of Oleg Tabakov. But Irina did not stop there either - she later continued her education at acting schools in New York and London.

What other actors thought was the ultimate dream was often just a starting point for her. After working for about 10 years at the Moscow Art Theater. Chekhov, where she played almost the entire classical repertoire, Apeksimova left there and created her own theater company, where she was engaged in the production of entreprise. Even in the 2nd year, she made her film debut, and her start fell on the 1990s, which were critical for Russian cinema. But even in the era of widespread unemployment in the acting environment, she was able to find her place in the profession. She could have made her debut in the acclaimed "Little Faith", but at the same time she was approved in the film "The Tower" and told her about it a little earlier, and the glory went to another actress. But soon Apeksimova made up for lost time, playing the main roles in the first new Russian TV series "Little things in life" and "Birthday of the Bourgeois", which brought her wide popularity.

As part of the acting profession, she found herself cramped, and she tried herself as a producer, TV presenter and theater worker. For 3 years she headed the Roman Viktyuk Theater, in 2015 she became the director of the Taganka Theater. When asked how she has enough strength for so many different areas of activity, she replied: "". Apeksimova admits that she always adhered to the principle of Napoleon: first get involved in a battle, and only then figure out what's what.

In addition to theater, cinema and television, singing was another hobby of hers. In 2011, Apeksimova decided to combine her vocal and artistic abilities, and she prepared a solo program "And Odessa is a girl for me!" The artist admits: "".

For 30 years of her film career, Irina Apeksimova has played in almost 60 films and TV series, in almost half of them she got the main roles, nevertheless, she herself does not consider her acting destiny to be happy. After “Bourgeois’s Birthday”, she became very popular, but the actress became a hostage to the image of Amina - a vamp woman, a cold-willed businesswoman, and later the directors did not see her in a different role. She was much closer to complex dramatic roles, as in the drama "Cage", where her heroine grew up in an orphanage, and then ended up in prison and a psychiatric hospital. In recent years, Apeksimova has been acting in films very rarely, and this happens not only because all her strength is taken away by the management of the Taganka Theater.

Apeksimova does not consider her film career successful, which she explains as follows: "". It is precisely because of the lack of realization in the cinema that the management of the theater sees Apeksimova as an opportunity to stay in the profession and do something meaningful for her.

Probably, only a very narrow circle of the closest people knows her real one. In public, she looks emotionally reserved, closed, cold and tough. But her daughter Daria Avratinskaya, who also became an actress, claims that she sees her completely different - soft, weak, feminine and tender, and that their house is the only place where Apeksimova can afford to be what she wants.

After the release of the series "Birthday of Bourgeois" they were called the most beautiful married couple both on screens and in real life, and no one knew that during the filming their marriage was bursting at the seams: Family drama of Valery Nikolaev and Irina Apeksimova.