Difficult character: curiosities and humor in the creative biography of Valentin Gaft

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

September 2 marks 81 years of Soviet and Russian theater and film actor, People's Artist of the RSFSR Valentin Gaft … He is known not only for his theatrical and film works, but also for his caustic epigrams and difficult character, because of which funny things often happened in his creative biography. Sometimes it caused laughter from those around him, but more often than not, his colleagues were not at all laughing.

A few days before entering the Moscow Art Theater School, Valentin Gaft accidentally met the then famous artist Sergei Stolyarov in the park and, burning with shame and embarrassment, asked to listen to him read the fable. Stolyarov not only did not refuse him, but even invited him to his home the next day and explained in detail how the fables should be read. Thanks to his advice, Gaft entered without difficulty. When young, he often fought, and in one fight two of his teeth were knocked out. Therefore, he came to the exams with two fixes and in this form he read "Vasily Terkin" by Tvardovsky.

Surprisingly, but at the beginning of his career, Valentin Gaft was very unsure of his abilities (however, he called himself a weak actor all his life). At premieres, he was often lost and could not utter a word out of excitement. So, in the Moscow Theater of Satire, the young actor found himself on the same stage with the famous Papanov, Aroseva and Zelenskaya. The situation was aggravated by the presence of relatives in the hall. Gaft barely moved around the stage and uttered his lines very quietly. Climbing onto the balcony constructed on the stage, he hooked on something, and the whole set collapsed with him into the orchestra pit. When he got on the stage, the audience was bursting with laughter.

Such episodes also happened at the dawn of his film career: his debut was M. Romm's film Murder on Dante Street, where a third-year student at the Moscow Art Theater School got the episodic role of a murderer. On the first shoot, an exposure meter was brought to his face (a device with which the shutter speed and aperture of a movie camera are set). Gaft decided that filming had begun and began to read out his own text. And when the shooting really began, he could not utter a word. The director reassured the young actor: "It's okay, you will be such a … shy killer."

In subsequent years, none of his colleagues not only considered Gaft shy, but many were even afraid of him because of his tough disposition, uncompromising and discouraging directness. Often he did not find a common language with actors and directors, which is why he had to move from one theater to another. On the set of the film "The Wizards" A. Yakovleva pissed off the entire film crew, making up for hours and delaying the shooting. Gaft could not stand such an attitude to work and once, according to the memoirs of the assistant director Y. Konstantinova, without leaving the image of Sataneev, in a rage he began to choke Yakovleva right in the frame. After this incident, they were removed separately, and then "glued" during installation.

Gaft's friend, artist Nikas Safronov, said: “Someone will say that Gaft is prickly - yes, he can fight back when circumstances require it. But in principle, Valya is sincere. He has his own principles, which he does not violate. For example, he never abused alcohol. Safronov recalls how he once refused to drink even with Marcello Mastroiani. In the 1970s. Gaft played in a theatrical production in Berlin, and a famous Italian actor came to the play. After they met backstage, Mastroiani was very surprised to see Gaft's bottle of kefir. The Italian said that big actors do not drink kefir, and offered Gaft to drink cognac from his flask. But Gaft flatly refused.

Valentin Gaft did not stand on ceremony at all with journalists. O. Shablinskaya, being an aspiring journalist, conducted an interview with Gaft and showed it to the actor before publication. He rewrote almost the entire text, saying: “They wrote everything as I said. But, if you came to me, you should have understood something about me, you should have guessed that I did not mean it! " A few years later, she again had to interview him. This time, the journalist ruled all his answers at her discretion. Imagine her surprise when Gaft said: "The first time the journalist understood me correctly and did not misinterpret anything!"

Relations with many actors deteriorated after Gaft wrote epigrams on them: 10 witty and vivid epigrams by Valentin Gaft