Margarita Terekhova - "black box with secrets": what made the actress abandon theater and cinema

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

August 25 marks the 75th anniversary of the People's Artist of the Russian Federation, popularly beloved Milady from The Three Musketeers and Diana from Dogs in the Manger, actress Margarita Terekhova … Since 2005, she has not acted in films, for about 7 years she has not appeared on the stage of the theater. In the press, there are periodically publications about the serious illness of the actress, but can you believe them? Why did Margarita Terekhova really give up her beloved profession?

Margarita Terekhova was brought into the acting profession by a lucky break. After she dropped out of physics and mathematics at Tashkent University and came to enter the theater institute in Moscow, the enrollment of applicants had already ended there. She was not admitted to VGIK, but at the studio school at the Mossovet Theater she was lucky enough to meet Yuri Zavadsky, who believed in the acting talent of a young provincial woman and took her to his studio.

In 1964, Terekhova was hired by the Mossovet Theater, on the stage of which she appeared for 20 years. Yu. Zavadsky called her "a black box with secrets, from which you don't know what to expect in the next minute." Since 1965, she began acting in films, and her first role in the film "Hello, It's Me!" was successful. She starred in different directors, but she is still called the actress of Tarkovsky, although she played only in one of his films - "The Mirror" (albeit two roles at once) and in the play "Hamlet".

Terekhova called the meeting with Andrei Tarkovsky one of the main events in her life. She had a special relationship with this director: she admired his talent and confessed that she was “in love with him in some kind of crazy impulse … But to fall in love is even impossible on the set, anyway this meant: the better you play, the more he will need you. " Tarkovsky himself called her "an ordinary brilliant actress", and later said: "It's good that I fell in love with Rita at the end of filming, otherwise the picture would not have been." However, this relationship did not go beyond the limits of the set. Terekhova explained: “He was a teacher for us, a demigod. And besides, he was not free."

In the late 1970s. All-Union popularity came to Margarita Terekhova after the films "Dog in the Manger", "Pious Martha" and "D'Artagnan and the Three Musketeers" were released. Their creative tandem with Mikhail Boyarsky was so successful that viewers immediately attributed the novel to them, although they were connected exclusively by partnership.

Together with Igor Talkov, Margarita Terekhova organized the "Balaganchik" collective and from 1983 to 1986. toured with him throughout the country. During perestroika, the actress rarely appeared on screens, focusing on theatrical work. According to the theatrical director A. Zhitinkin, Tarkovsky “encoded” Terekhova in an amicable way, after which she could no longer act “in whatever it was,” and in the era of serials she completely disappeared from the screens.

In 2005, Terekhova made her creative debut as a director: she staged Chekhov's The Seagull, where she played herself along with her children, Anna and Alexander. This production was the first and the last for her. After that, she stopped acting in films, and soon - and to go on the stage of the theater.

The actress was reluctant to make contact with journalists before, and in recent years she has completely stopped giving interviews and leads a reclusive lifestyle. Several times the journalists managed to take her by surprise on the street and ask a few questions. Her strange behavior and incoherent responses led them to jump to conclusions: apparently, the actress suffers from alcohol addiction.

However, it turned out that in fact Terekhova was sick: due to her age, she was overcome by sclerosis and Alzheimer's disease. It is for this reason that the most talented theater and film actress no longer appears on stage and on screens. But films with her participation do not lose their popularity and love of the audience. Then and now: 15 photos of the heroes who starred in the film "D'Artagnan and the Three Musketeers"