From an orphanage and a juvenile colony to movie stars: Vasily Lykshin's short and bright journey

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

He was allotted only 22 years of life, but during this time he managed a lot and lived an amazing fate. No one believed that a guy who grew up in an orphanage and thundered into a juvenile colony would have a happy future, but Vasily Lykshin not only managed to turn off the curve, but also found a foster mother in the director of his first film, and then became popular and a sought-after actor, known to viewers for his roles in the TV series "Thunders" and "Ranetki". Despite his young age, he managed to build a happy family. But 10 months after the birth of his daughter, the actor's life suddenly ended …

Unlike other orphanages, Vasily Lykshin knew his parents - he was born into a complete family, only his mother and father drank heavily and did not take care of the children at all. He later told about his childhood: "". As a result, the father and mother were deprived of parental rights, and at the age of 5 Vasya, together with his brother and sister, ended up in an orphanage, where he spent the next 10 years.

He was a difficult teenager - he fought, bully and often got into unpleasant stories. His behavior was often discussed at meetings of the Commission on Juvenile Affairs. At the age of 12, he was registered with the police, and at 14 he was sent to a special school for stealing office supplies from the class. Once, together with other students of the special school, Lykshin climbed into the general's dacha - according to him, they just wanted to get food. When a police patrol arrived there, everyone fled, and Vasya was detained. After that, he was sent to a juvenile colony for a year and a half.

Most likely, his further fate would have been very sad if the case had not brought him to the director Svetlana Stasenko, who became not only his godmother in the cinema, but also a real guardian angel. For a long time she could not find a boy for the role of the main character in her childhood - a difficult teenager who ended up in a colony in her film "Angel on the Road". All the children who came to the audition looked very happy, and she needed a hero who was raised by the street, who does not have that carelessness that is always guessed in children of this age from well-to-do families. She saw a child's smile and adult eyes only in street children, about whom she had previously made a documentary film.

The crime drama Angel by the Sideways was Svetlana Stasenko's first full-length feature film, but in it she wanted to achieve the same level of lifelikeness and realism that she created in her documentaries. She first saw Vasya Lykshin on a cassette - once a documentary filmmaker came to the orphanage, filmed a story about children, the cassette was archived. Svetlana immediately thought that this was the boy she had been looking for for a long time. When she went to the orphanage after him, it turned out that by that time Vasya was already in the colony. Then Stasenko wrote a letter to the director of the colony at Mosfilm, in which she asked to release Lykshin to the shooting. The director went to meet her, and so Vasya went straight from the colony to the set. Despite the lack of experience in filming and acting education, he coped with his role just brilliantly and even became a laureate of the prestigious Hollywood Young Artist Awards, which is called the children's Oscar.

After a month of working together, Svetlana suddenly realized that she could not let Vasya go back to the colony. During this time, he became a dear person for her. She saw how much he lacked the love and care of his relatives and, although she herself already had two daughters, she made a difficult decision - to issue guardianship over him. The director understood that if Vasya returned to the colony, he would no longer have a chance to change his fate. Svetlana wrote a petition, achieved a reconsideration of Lykshin's case and his conditional early release.

Vasya Lykshin stayed after filming at the director's house. At first it was difficult for him - he never lived in a full-fledged family and was used to taking care of himself on his own. I had to learn a lot, fill in the gaps in education and knowledge, because at the age of 15 the guy did not even know the multiplication table. At the same time, he was very capable and grasped everything on the fly. The director was confident that his acting talent and artistic charisma were by nature, and that he needed to continue to develop in this direction. Later, Svetlana admitted that only love and patience gave her the opportunity to help Vasya gain faith in herself and in people and give up her orphanage habits.

2 years after his debut film work, Lykshin got one of the main roles in the TV series "The Thunders", which brought him his first resounding popularity. A year later, he starred in the sequel to this series "The Thunders. House of Hope ", played a cameo role in the detective series" The Postman ", in 2009 he appeared in the TV series" Ranetki "and in the 6-episode melodrama" House on Ozernaya ", where Vasily Lanovoy, Irina Kupchenko, Alexander Roebuck, Elena Panova, Nikita Vysotsky. It was a real happiness for him to be in such a company.

Happy changes have also taken place in his personal life. He met a girl named Lena, who became his wife in 2008. She was 5 years older than him, she had a son from her first marriage, and Lykshin adopted him. And in early 2009, the 22-year-old actor had a daughter, Kira. It would seem that a bright streak has finally begun in his life.

One day in October 2009, Vasily Lykshin returned tired from the filming of Ranetok, went to bed - and never woke up again. That night he was alone - his wife and daughter were visiting their parents. He did not complain about his health, he had never had heart pains before. But a difficult childhood and hungry orphanage years, obviously, still affected his health. At night, the actor's heart stopped.

Vasily Lykshin was not the only actor who made it to the big screen from the orphanage: 5 Russian artists who grew up without parents.