May 30, 1937
В Sverdlovsk, He was born into a family of a director and a conservatory teacher Alexander DemyanenkoTheater and film actor. The legendary "Shurik" from comedies Gaidai.
Straightforward, honest, decent - these are the qualities of a suicide (Alexander Demyanenko - about Shurik)
Since childhood, he was interested in theater, but at 17, due to anxiety, he failed the exam at the Moscow Art Theater.
After six months of studying at the Sverdlovsk Law Institute, he moved to Moscow and enrolled in GITIS. He recited the poem "Good Girl Lida" for his entrance exams. Yaroslav Smelyakov — the very same one that was later declared in Gaidai’s short story “Obsession.”
At 22 he graduated from university and played on the stage of the Mayakovsky Theatre.
At 25, he moved to Leningrad and joined Lenfilm. By then, he was already known for several romantic roles, including a young Red Army soldier in Berlin during the final days of the Great Patriotic War (Peace to the Entering).
In 1963, he played a journalist who uncovers fraud (Empty Flight), then a KGB investigator (State Criminal), and a savings bank employee who finds personal happiness (The Career of Dima Gorin).
Leonid Gaidai's comedy Operation Y and Shurik's Other Adventures (1965) brought him nationwide fame. The leading role of the ideologically correct third-year student Shurik was auditioned by Petrosyan, Zbruev and three dozen other contenders. The artistic council settled on Valery Nosik, but Gaidai disagreed and insisted on the shy 28-year-old brunette Demyanenko, whose hair had to be urgently dyed blond.
They painted me with blanquit—something similar to a mixture of lime and something. It was a horrible procedure. They smeared it all over my head and, damn it, burned all my skin.
In "Kidnapping, Caucasian Style, or Shurik's New Adventures," the 30-year-old actor faced new challenges: filming the feast scene ("I feel sorry for the bird!") required various approaches—Gaidai demanded that Demyanenko alternate between "shaking with sobs" and crying sparingly, "gritting his teeth and crying like a man." And during one take, when Shurik was rolling toward a cliff in his sleeping bag, the "safety people" made a mistake, and the actor actually ended up in a mountain stream.
His final success was cemented by his role as engineer Timofeev in "Ivan Vasilyevich Changes Profession" (1973). Afterward, the starring role of "Shurik" became Demyanenko's curse: people stopped calling him by his first name, and strangers on the street tried to adjust his glasses, tug at his ear, or clap him on the shoulder. "Shurik, would you like some vodka?"
Demyanenko's nerves were giving way, and at some point he began to answer: "I'm not Shurik, I'm Alexander Sergeevich."
Rumors began to circulate that Demyanenko had become a celebrity: he walked around the city wearing dark glasses and left his dacha less and less, preferring classical music to social gatherings.
I prefer not to be noticed
I'm already 60, but for everyone I'm still "Shurik"
Roles in other films - "Gloomy River", "The Little Humpbacked Horse", "Tales of the Old Wizard", "The Green Van", "The Singing Teacher" - were not so famous.
I was especially irritated by the increased attention paid to me when I didn't have any work. You're basically useless, but people keep recognizing you.
In the mid-1990s, he suffered his first heart attack while working at the Comedy Theatre: the press blamed the artistic director Tatyana Kazakova, who allegedly said that she did not know Demyanenko as a theater actor, but had only seen him in films.
After his dismissal, he played at the "Shelter of Comedians" theatre.
In films he was a dubbing actor: they used his voice to “speak” Robert De Niro, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Omar Sharif and other foreign stars.
Having despaired of big roles, he agreed to star in the first Russian sitcom, "Strawberry," for which he was harshly criticized by his colleagues.
Soon after filming, he suffered a second heart attack.
He died in 1999, at 62, a few days before his heart surgery.
