The long-suffering happiness of Alexander Mikhailov: Three dreams, two marriages and four children of a famous actor

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

He played more than 75 roles in films, and embodied a little fewer images on the theater stage. The most striking works of Alexander Mikhailov in the cinema were the films "Lonely Hostels", "Men", "Love and Doves", and in the theater he played Ivan the Terrible, Prince Myshkin, Raskolnikov. It is even difficult to imagine that once an actor dreamed not of a stage at all, but entered a theatrical institute thanks to pure chance.

Sea soul

His life from the very beginning was not easy. Alexander Mikhailov was born in a Buryat village in 1944. In the same place, in Buryatia, he spent his early years. Later, the family moved to the Steppe station in the Trans-Baikal Territory. He was only four years old when his parents parted and in the future, all the worries about raising a son fell on the shoulders of one mother.

Stepanida Naumovna was a domineering woman, sometimes even tough. But she knew how to solve all problems with the help of a song. If it was difficult at heart and wanted to howl with boredom, she asked her son to get a balalaika and started mischievous ditties. And sometimes, in a clear voice, she brought out family Old Believer songs. Probably, it was from his mother that Alexander inherited his musicality.

He was only ten years old when he accidentally saw a reproduction of Aivazovsky's painting "The Ninth Wave" in a magazine and fell ill with the sea forever. Then he was simply locked into the dream of the sea. Ten-year-old Alexander twice ran away from home and without a penny of money tried to get to the Nakhimov school in Leningrad. After the second escape of her son, Stepanida Naumovna decided to move to Vladivostok so that her son could go to study at a nautical school.

True, they took a sailor only after the eighth grade, while Alexander only graduated from seven. But he was not going to retreat from his dream: he entered a vocational school, which stood right on the seashore, in the Diomede Bay, and there they were given vests instead of T-shirts. But after graduation he did not go to the shipyard, but persuaded the captain of the diesel-electric ship "Yaroslavl" to take him on a voyage, to any position.

Alexander Mikhailov became a minder's apprentice and for two years went to sea, feeling absolutely happy. He became a minder, then an electrician and already received a referral to a nautical school, when during a storm in the Sea of Okhotsk four seiners went to the bottom at once. The vessel, on which Alexander Mikhailov went, was heavier and was able to get out of the storm. But there was no communication with him for several days and on the shore they no longer hoped to see the crew members alive.

Going ashore, Alexander Mikhailov saw his mother, who had turned gray during these few days. Mom then delivered an ultimatum: either the sea or she. He decided to write off, but only for a while, until mom calms down. He worked as an electrician at a garment factory, continued to dream of the sea. And then a new dream burst into his life.

Dream of the stage

He got to the play "Ivanov" based on Chekhov quite by accident. I hoped to sit out until intermission and immediately run to a nearby restaurant, where the fishermen were going to celebrate the end of fishing season. Students of the Far Eastern Institute of Arts played that day. Alexander Mikhailov not only did not leave after the first act, but even after the end of the performance, he was far from immediately able to budge. Then he was captured by a new dream, about the stage. That evening he wandered for a long time across the Amur Bay, bidding farewell to the ocean.

Soon he was already on the threshold of the Far Eastern Pedagogical Institute of Arts, where an additional admission to the theater department was opened. In just one night, he learned an excerpt from The Kreutzer Sonata, poetry and a fable that he found, literally pestering passers-by on the street, who shied away from him like he was crazy. Only one man asked why he needed the fable, and then he took him to his home, where he handed over the book with the fable "Squirrel".

At the exam, the unlucky applicant was squeezed and even covered with red spots from excitement, but the head of the course Vera Nikolaevna Sundukova believed in him and insisted on his enrollment. And during the first two years of study, when some teachers proved Mikhailov's professional unsuitability to her, Vera Nikolaevna continued to believe in him and did not allow him to be expelled.

He revealed himself only at the end of the second year, when, together with Yuri Kuznetsov, they showed an excerpt from Sholokhov's Virgin Soil Upturned. At the end of the show, he was applauded not only by fellow students, but also by teachers. So another dream of Alexander Mikhailov came true, he became an actor. He served at the Saratov Drama Theater, later became a member of the troupe of the Yermolova Theater, then played at the Maly Theater. Since 1974 he began acting in films.

Dreams of happiness

It is not for nothing that Alexander Mikhailov calls himself a dreamer. He has been dreaming all his life, since childhood. And most importantly, all his main dreams tend to come true. True, sometimes this does not happen immediately.

In the second year of the institute, the future actor met Vera Musatova, a student of the Faculty of Music. Then he believed: this is happiness for life. However, something happened that often happens in families: the mother did not accept her son's girlfriend. Then Alexander nevertheless married his beloved and then for 35 years rushed between his two beloved women, his wife and mother. But all his efforts were in vain, even the birth of his son and grandson Constantine could not reconcile them.

He was tired of family squabbles, and after that he completely plunged into an affair with colleague Olga Kuznetsova, who in 1991 gave birth to his daughter Anastasia.

Then there was a painful divorce, which, in spite of everything, allowed the former spouses to maintain normal relations. Nevertheless, after parting with his first wife, Alexander Mikhailov could not recover for a long time, seeing the fragments of his dream of family happiness. For some time he did not even want to live, and he went to the war in Chechnya, first with concerts, after that he stayed to fight. But God saved his life and gave him another chance to be happy.

He met Oksana Pozharnova while she was dating actor Vladimir Vasiliev. It turned out that they were born on the same day, only with a difference of 23 years, and Oksana's great-grandfather bore the surname Mikhailov. He served as a firefighter in the village of Sokolovo, and the profession soon became his last name.

Oksana later married Vasiliev, their son Vladislav was born. The boy was only two years old when his father died of a heart attack complicated by diabetes.

They met again a year after the death of Vladimir Vasiliev. Then Alexander Mikhailov asked Ksenia to look after her mother while he was on tour. Returning to the capital, the actor immediately went to his mother and found a complete idyll: Stepanida Naumovna and Ksenia managed to make friends. Then he had the idea that this woman had appeared in his life for a reason.

They have been together for more than 17 years, their daughter Miroslava has been playing in the theater and acting in films since the age of 16, and Alexander Mikhailov adopted Vladislav, so he proudly says that he has four children.

In his second marriage, he found peace of mind and realized that he was absolutely happy. Ksenia became for him that reliable rear, which he had so lacked all his life. All his dreams have come true, but in the life of Alexander Mikhailov there is always a place for new horizons and dreams.

One of the most striking works of Alexander Mikhailov in cinema was the role of Vasily Kuzyakin in the film "Love and Doves". The film could have become a two-part film, but director Vladimir Menshov had to cut out a lot of frames, criticized by the censors for immorality and "humiliation of the dignity of ordinary collective farmers."