Why the family life of Boris Smorchkov collapsed: The fatal feeling of the star of the film "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears"

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

In the filmography of Boris Smorchkov there are about 45 films, but there were practically no leading roles among them. His most striking role was Nikolai, Antonina's husband in the film "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears" - the one who was looking for Gosha and invited him to be friends at home. In the 1980s. he was a popular actor, but star status did not guarantee him creative success in the future and did not bring any material benefits - he spent almost his entire life in a hostel. His departure in 2008 went unnoticed for the majority, and his acquaintances said that the 63-year-old actor died of melancholy and loneliness, because he could not live without the one that became the only one for him …

There were no artists in the family of Boris Smorchkov. He was born into a simple working class family with three other children. School teachers drew attention to Boris's acting inclinations - he was very artistic, had a beautiful timbre of voice and easily transformed into any images. Morechkov attended a theater club and boxed at the Dynamo sports club. After school, he served in the army, and then his older sister helped him get a job as a steward, which guaranteed a solid income. But Boris's dreams of the theater did not leave, so he quit and went to the theater as a stage technician.

For the first time, Boris Smorchkov came to the set when he was 17 years old - then he played one of the roles in the film for children "Green Patrol". 10 years later, he graduated from the Shchukin Theater School and was accepted into the troupe of the Sovremennik Theater, on the stage of which he performed for more than 30 years. From the age of 27, the actor began to appear on screens, at first mainly in films-plays. In the second half of the 1970s. he played 2 main roles in films - in the films "The Lost Expedition" and "Golden River". But his finest hour came in the late 1970s, when the 35-year-old actor played the husband of Antonina - one of the main heroines of the legendary melodrama “Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears” by Vladimir Menshov.

His hero Nikolai was a simple Soviet guy, an exemplary family man, constant, reliable, loyal, albeit somewhat naive and artless. Their family with Antonina was the strongest and happiest, with the movie wife, actress Raisa Ryazanova, Smorchkov developed friendly relations - they met and called up on the phone years after filming. But behind the scenes, the actor's family happiness was very short-lived. Back in his student years, Boris Smorchkov met Anna Varpakhovskaya, who also studied at the Shchukin Theater School. He was fascinated by her literally at first sight, not yet assuming that this feeling would become fatal for him.

Anna Varpakhovskaya was born in Magadan, where both of her parents were serving sentences for political offenses. Her father, theater director Leonid Varpakhovsky, spent a total of 18 years in the camps, on charges of “promoting Trotskyism,” “counterrevolutionary agitation,” and espionage for Japan. And her mother, opera singer Ida Ziskina, ended up in the Kolyma as a member of the family of a traitor to the Motherland - her first husband, an engineer who worked on the construction of the Chinese Eastern Railway, was accused in connection with the Nazis in the city of Harbin and shot. Varpakhovsky became her second husband, together they worked on the creation of a theater for prisoners. In 1949 g.they had a daughter, Anna, who inherited a passion for theater from her parents. Only after the rehabilitation of her father in 1957, the family was able to return to Moscow, where Anna entered the Shchukin Theater School.

In her studies, Anna did not show great success, and the teachers raised the question of her expulsion. Then Boris came up with a mise-en-scene from Chekhov's "The Seagull" and rehearsed it together with Anna. Together they performed this piece brilliantly, and Varpakhovskaya was given another chance. Soon he and Boris got married. And after completing their studies in 1971, their acting careers took off in parallel. Anna was accepted into the troupe of the Moscow Drama Theater. K. Stanislavsky, Boris performed on the stage of Sovremennik. But cinema brought real popularity and national love to the spouses.

At the age of 25, Anna Varpakhovskaya performed her debut role in the cinema - she played Zoya Ladnikova in “Walking through the agony”, and at 30 she gained all-Union popularity - after the role of Liza in the comedy “Vanity of Vanities”. In the same year, her husband became famous after the role of Nikolai in the film "Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears." The actor said: "".

Their colleagues were convinced that after such a success, both spouses would have a dizzying career in cinema, but this did not happen - both Smorchkov and Varpakhovskaya subsequently got mostly episodic roles. The actress herself believed that her film career was prevented by the stigma of the "daughter of an enemy of the people": "".

When in the 1980s. spouses began to offer less and less movie roles, Anna started talking about emigration. Her brother moved to Canada and called her to him. But Boris Smorchkov categorically did not share his wife's views - he did not see his future abroad. Their family life cracked, and they soon parted. In 1994 Anna Varpakhovskaya left the USSR. In the future, both her personal and creative life developed successfully: together with her brother, they created a theater named after. L. Varpakhovsky in Montreal, where performances were staged for Russian-speaking residents of Canada, the actress got married for the second time.

But Boris Smorchkov, after parting with Anna, did not arrange his personal life, and until the end of his days he called his ex-wife his only love: "". Almost all his life Boris lived in the Sovremennik dormitory, only in his sixties did he get his own apartment.

The actor had no children, and in the last years of his life he felt very lonely. They say he started drinking because of this. In 2004, due to age and health problems, Smorchkov left the theater, in the cinema he was periodically offered the role of old people, although the actor was about 60 years old. He was practically blind due to cataracts, his heart was more and more often worried. On the set of one of his last films, Morechkov fell and hit his chest hard, after which he could not recover for a long time. But he did not complain to anyone about his problems, tried not to disturb others and did not ask for help. On the night of May 10, 2008, the 63-year-old actor died in his sleep from a heart attack. He left quietly and imperceptibly - just as he had lived in recent years. His acquaintances said that in fact he died of melancholy and loneliness. Without Anna Varpakhovskaya, his life lost its meaning …

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