Oleg Strizhenov - 89: Why the famous actor earned the fame of an "inconvenient" hero

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

August 10 marks the 89th anniversary of the actor, who has become a real legend of Soviet cinema - Oleg Strizhenov … His calling cards were roles in the films The Gadfly, The Queen of Spades, The Captivating Star of Happiness, etc., but his filmography could have twice as many works. The directors considered him too intolerant and were afraid to offer him scripts, knowing that once he even went into conflict with the Minister of Culture Yekaterina Furtseva and the famous director Sergei Bondarchuk, abandoning the role of Bolkonsky after he was approved.

Oleg Strizhenov was born in 1929 into the family of a serviceman who went through the Civil War and the Great Patriotic War. His eldest son became a military pilot, and the middle one became an actor. During the war years, the youngest son Oleg worked as a mechanic in the film processing workshop, and later received a specialty in cinematography and at the age of 14 was awarded a medal for his labor activity during the Second World War. After graduating from the Shchukin School, he entered the troupe of the Tallinn Russian Drama Theater, and then performed on the stage of the Moscow Art Theater.

The film debut of Oleg Strizhenov took place in 1951 - he played a cameo role in the film "Sports Honor", and after 4 years he got the main roles in the films that made him all-Union famous - "Mexican" and "Gadfly". Many famous actors auditioned for the role of Arthur in The Gadfly, but the director chose a novice actor with an aristocratic appearance. After that, he was assigned the role of a noble romantic hero, in which he was especially convincing and magnificent. Later, the actor admitted that such a powerful start to his film career not only gives numerous privileges, but also obliges a lot: "".

After Strizhenov played the main role in "Forty-first", he was often offered the same type of role of white officers, which the actor refused. He even rejected the offer of his friend, director Vladimir Fedin, to play the lieutenant in his film "Lyubov Yarovaya". The audience did not see him in The Ballad of a Soldier, where he had already started filming, but filming had to be suspended due to the director's injury. And when they resumed, Strizhenov was already filming "White Nights" with Pyriev, and the main role in "The Ballad of a Soldier" was played by Vladimir Ivashov, for whom she became iconic.

Although the actor did not suffer from stellar illness and did not call himself a star, considering it "offensively funny", he was always independent, self-sufficient and had a sense of dignity that did not allow him to make concessions in situations when other actors were ready to do anything to get a role. He gave up the roles that his colleagues dreamed of, and went into conflict with directors who in others aroused awe. In the acting environment, there were legends about Strizhenov's quarrelsome and uncompromising character. He himself did not deny that in his work he was always intolerant and demanding - both to himself and to those around him.

A real scandal erupted during the filming of War and Peace. Director Sergei Bondarchuk, with whom Oleg Strizhenov was friends, for a whole year could not decide on the choice of an actor for the role of Andrei Bolkonsky. He invited dozens of applicants to auditions, knowing that both Strizhenov himself and the audience want to see him in this image. Only among the latter was he invited to audition. But by that time he was so offended by Bondarchuk that he decided to take revenge on him. Strizhenov passed tests and was approved for the role of Bolkonsky, which was even written about in "Soviet Screen", but at the last moment the actor refused to act, putting the director in a difficult situation.

Even Ekaterina Furtseva tried to resolve this conflict. Once she called Strizhenov and invited him to a meeting, and he, deciding that this was another invention of his inventive fans, refused her in a harsh manner and hung up. The Minister of Culture had to call him again and repeat the request. And when Strizhenov came to her, he saw in her office members of the film crew headed by Bondarchuk, representatives of the Central Committee's culture department and deputy ministers. But neither the arguments of the "Mosfilm" management, nor the words of Furtseva that it was "a film on a special assignment," convinced him. The actor flatly refused to act: "". As a result, Vyacheslav Tikhonov played Bolkonsky.

Strizhenov often refused legendary roles, which later became the calling cards of other actors. He did not want to play Hamlet with Kozintsev and Vronsky in Zarkhi's Anna Karenina. The latter even approved it without trial, which he notified by telegram: "". However, the actor found it offensive: "". Many directors after that simply did not offer him roles, not wanting to get involved with the "inconvenient" hero.

After 1987, Oleg Strizhenov almost did not act in films - he said that the situation in the cinema can be described in three words: "". He remained true to his principle: either the main roles in a good movie, or nothing. Only twice did the directors manage to convince him to appear on the set again: in 2000, Vladimir Basov Jr. persuaded Strizhenov to star in his film "Instead of me", and in 2004 he played in the series "Five Stars".

Despite the fact that there are only about 40 works in his filmography, Oleg Strizhenov does not believe that he could not fully realize his creative potential. In his opinion, a large number of roles is not an indicator of an actor's success. It is much more important for him to play what he himself wants and loves, and in what images he will remain in the memory of the audience. And then he fulfilled his task 100 percent, because most of his heroes became legends of Soviet cinema.

Few viewers know that the image that Oleg Strizhenov embodied on the screens had a real prototype: How the Russian revolutionary writer inspired Ethel Voynich to create the novel "The Gadfly".