The tragic fate of Talgat Nigmatulin: The mystery of the death of "Soviet Bruce Lee"

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

In the 1980s. he was not only one of the most popular film actors, who became famous for the film "Pirates of the XX century", but also the idol of millions of boys - Talgat Nigmatulin in this first Soviet action movie he demonstrated elements of karate technique, which he mastered to perfection. Because of this, he received the nickname "Soviet Bruce Lee". He seemed fearless and invincible, but died in a fight with sectarians, whom he deliberately refused to resist …

Talgat was a fan of hoaxes and more than once told his friends that he belonged to an ancient khan family, although in fact he was born into a simple Uzbek-Tatar family in the Kyrgyz town of Kyzyl-Kiya. His father was a miner. He died when his son was not even two years old. The mother worked at a school and could not feed two children, so she was forced to send Talgat to an orphanage for a while.

As a child, he was sickly, weak, withdrawn and unsociable, but this became an excuse for him to work hard on himself. Talgat started playing sports and read a lot. In order to master the Russian language perfectly, he rewrote Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace by hand twice. Subsequently, he seriously took up literary work - he wrote poems and stories that were published. Few viewers knew that Nigmatulin was the author of the text of the famous song "Russian Birches".

When Nigmatulin's works fell into the hands of the screenwriter Agishev, he advised him to enroll in the Higher Courses for Scriptwriters and Directors at the USSR State Film Agency. Talgat followed his advice and set off to conquer Moscow. The first time to enter VGIK did not work, and Nigmatulin became a student at the school of circus and pop art. There he continued to play sports, became interested in wrestling and soon became the champion of Uzbekistan. Talgat was engaged in martial arts all his life, which was very useful to him in the acting profession.

His colorful appearance was soon noticed by the Mosfilm staff, and Nigmatulin was offered to play the role of a white officer in the film The Ballad of the Commissar. His film debut largely predetermined his future career. Director Alisher Khamdamov said: "".

In 1968, Nigmatulin was admitted to VGIK, where Nikolai Eremenko, Natalya Arinbasarova, Natalya Belokhvostikova, Natalya Bondarchuk and Natalya Gvozdikova became his classmates. Soon he completely got rid of the accent and turned from an angular provincial into a real oriental handsome man. After graduation, Nigmatulin came to Tashkent and started working at the Uzbekfilm studio.

All-Union popularity came to him after filming the film "Pirates of the XX century". It was the first Soviet action movie directed by Boris Durov and written by Stanislav Govorukhin. At first, Nigmatulin was involved in the crowd scene along with other athletes, but the director drew attention to him and gave him the role of the main villain - the pirate Saleh. Talgat told his classmate Nikolai Eremenko about this and advised him to come to the audition. And he got the second main role - the mechanic Sergei Sergeevich. Eremenko also had good sports training, and both actors refused the help of understudies and performed all the tricks on their own.

Nikolai Eremenko said: "".

The success of the "Pirates of the Twentieth Century" was deafening - in 1980.the film was watched by about 90 million viewers, which became an absolute rental record. The boys went to the cinema several times, the actors Eremenko and Nigmatulin became their idols, karate sections began to appear everywhere at schools and institutes. When Talgat came to Tashkent to visit his relatives and decided to invite them to the cinema for this film, tickets had to be bought from speculators at exorbitant prices - at the box office everything was sold out a week in advance. After that, Nigmatulin starred in several more films. Notable was his work in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, where he played Indian Joe. In total, there are about 40 roles in his filmography.

In the early 1980s. The Fourth Way sect under the leadership of Abai Borubaev and Murza Kymbatbaev was very popular. People from all over the USSR came to them in Kyrgyzstan, they wrote about them in the newspapers. The actor was busy with spiritual searches all his life, was interested in esotericism and Eastern philosophy and fell under the influence of sectarians, whom he considered his spiritual mentors. In 1985, they split: several students from Vilnius decided to organize their own sect and stopped paying "dues". Abai took several henchmen with him and went to deal with the disobedient ones. Talgat went with them. However, when he was ordered to punish the "schismatics" and take their money from them, he refused to participate. Then Abai ordered to beat Nigmatulin himself. Five sectarians hit him blow after blow for eight hours; later, 119 injuries were recorded on the actor's body. At the same time, he did not even try to resist, although with his preparation he could cope with all opponents.

The reasons why 35-year-old Talgat Nigmatulin voluntarily doomed himself to death still remain a mystery. Many are convinced that he refused to respond with violence to violence, others believe that he hoped that the "Teacher" would stop the executioners, making sure of his obedience. Only in the morning did they realize that they had overdone it and called an ambulance. Talgat died on the way to the hospital. A friend of the actor, artist Vyacheslav Akhunov, said: "".

His filming partner also passed away ahead of schedule: The bright life and premature death of Nikolai Eremenko.