Galina Polskikh's unfulfilled dreams: failed actress Fellini, unfulfilled family happiness

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

November 27 marks the 78th anniversary of the People's Artist of the RSFSR, theater and film actress Galina Polskikh … She has been acting in films for 56 years, played about 150 roles, and she can be safely called a favorite actress of several generations. Her popularity could reach global proportions if she accepted Federico Fellini's offer to film abroad. And personal happiness could be complete if she did not refuse numerous fans, devoting all of herself to raising her daughters.

The fate of Galina Polskikh could have turned out completely differently, if one day her grandmother had not taken her from the orphanage and taken to Moscow. Gali's father died at the front, his mother died of tuberculosis. My grandmother worked as a cleaner in a store, but did her best to ensure that her granddaughter did not need anything. She was against her decision to enter the "artist", but did not prohibit. So Galina Polskikh became a student at VGIK.

There she met a third-year director of the directing faculty Faik Hasanov, married him and gave birth to a daughter, Irada. She always spoke warmly about those times and about her husband: “Smart, well-read. He looked after very nicely. I spent the night on the stairs at my entrance, so that in the morning I would go with me to the institute. And then he came to my grandmother, asked for my hand. While I was sleeping, I slowly measured the size of my finger, bought two wedding rings ….

As a 22-year-old mother of a one and a half year old child, Galina Polskikh played an eighth-grader in her first film, Dingo the Wild Dog. She was believed not only by the director and the audience, but also by the partner in the film - the 14-year-old leading actor T. Umurzakov fell in love with the actress and did not let anyone near her. And she flared up feelings for the second director of the picture, both the film crew and the actress's husband soon found out about their romance.

The Wild Dingo Dog was an incredible success, winning prizes at film festivals in Vienna, London and Venice. At the Venice Film Festival, Federico Fellini himself expressed his admiration for the young actress and offered to star in his next film. He was supposed to come next year to the film festival in the USSR, but due to illness he could not. They say he sent a telegram to Goskino asking them to let Galina go to the shooting, but in those days, Soviet actresses could only dream about it.

The next success of Galina Polskikh was the role in the film "I Walk Through Moscow", where she played a record saleswoman. While she acted in films, her husband could not find himself in directing, although the actress considered him very talented and promising. When he finally began filming in 1965, his life was tragically cut short in a car accident. Two weeks before that, Galina's grandmother had died, and at that time she was filming the film "Journalist" by her teacher Sergei Gerasimov, the role of Shurochka was created especially for her, and the actress could not leave the shooting.

The second husband of Galina Polskikh was the son of Mosfilm director Alexander Surin. Despite the fact that she soon gave birth to his daughter, the husband's family did not accept the daughter-in-law, so the marriage did not last long. As a result, the actress raised two daughters alone. She never married again. She had affairs, but the girls were very jealous of their mother and were hostile to all her fans. She could have arranged her personal life, but she devoted herself to children and work.

Even in the 1990s, when many actors were left without work and were going through the most difficult times, Galina Polskikh continued to appear in the acclaimed trilogy Love in Russian, in the first sitcom Strawberry. She agreed to roles in TV shows and was not afraid to change in accordance with the requirements of the new time.

And after 70, Galina Polskikh continues to act in films. “You can't get out of the habit of working, you need to stay in the profession,” says the actress. - I like to be in demand. I still want to do a lot, and the desire to get a good real role does not disappear ….

The creative career of Galina Polskikh's classmate at VGIK developed in a different way. Svetlana Svetlichnaya: the vicissitudes of fate of the first Soviet sex symbol