Loyalty to herself: Why one of the most beautiful Soviet actresses Zhanna Bolotova left the cinema

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

On October 19, the Soviet theater and film actress, People's Artist of the RSFSR celebrates her 76th birthday Zhanna Bolotova … Her name is hardly known to the modern viewer, and in the 1970s. she was one of the most popular and most beautiful actresses. In the late 1980s, Bolotova suddenly disappeared from the screens and stopped giving interviews. For many years nothing was known about her fate. Only recently did the actress admit what made her abandon her film career forever.

Zhanna Bolotova's film debut took place at school age: at the age of 16 she starred in the film by Kulidzhanov and Segel "The House I Live In". After school, she entered VGIK, where she studied with Galina Polskikh, Larisa Kadochnikova, Larisa Luzhina, Svetlana Svetlichnaya, Natalia Kustinskaya. Surrounded by such beauties, she did not consider her external data outstanding, although students, directors and spectators paid attention to her beauty. Her teacher Sergei Gerasimov invited her to his films more than once, noticing not only the attractive appearance of the young actress, but also her extraordinary professional abilities.

After graduation, Zhanna Bolotova was admitted to the Film Actor's Studio Theater. Both on the theatrical stage and in the cinema, she often got the role of girls outwardly tender and fragile, but strong-willed and stubborn, and the image of a "girl with character" was entrenched in her. She was like that in life - she allowed herself to enter into an argument even with the director Sergei Gerasimov during the filming.

Her talent was first appreciated in 1969, when at the International Festival in Varna she won the Best Actress award in the film 24-25 Does Not Return. " Her work was also recognized as the best at the International Festival in Trieste in 1974 (the film "The Silence of Dr. Evens"). And in 1977 she won the USSR State Prize for her role in the film "The Flight of Mr. McKinley").

Zhanna Bolotova always had many fans, and for the first time she married very early, to the young actor Nikolai Dvigubsky. But this marriage did not last long - a year later, her former boyfriend Nikolai Gubenko made sure that the girl returned to him. Since then, they have not parted and more than once said that their family is the most valuable thing in life.

In the late 1980s. the actress stopped acting in films, and her husband left directing. They spend six months at the dacha, and in the autumn-winter period they return to Moscow. The couple leads a rather secluded lifestyle, does not appear at social events, and very rarely gives interviews. Zhanna became a housewife and reappeared on the screens only once - in 2005 in the film "Zhmurki", as she considered Balabanov one of the few modern directors who made decent films.

As the actress recently admitted, she and her husband were never able to come to terms with the collapse of the USSR and accept the new reality in society and in cinema. Zhanna Bolotova says that they still have the Soviet Union in their house: "".

The actress left the cinema at the age of 47, when her peers continued to act successfully, but Bolotova could not come to terms with the fact that the Soviet acting school died, and what appeared in her place terrified her. "", - says Bolotova.

In addition, Bolotova's husband Nikolai Gubenko, leaving directorial activity, went into politics. He was the last Minister of Culture of the USSR (1989-1991), and then became a deputy. And the actress decided to devote herself to the family and taking care of her husband. Nikolay Gubenko says: "". All that remains for fans of the actress Zhanna Bolotova is to revise old films with her participation: "People and Animals", "Wounded", "From the Life of Vacationers", "And Life, and Tears, and Love", etc.

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