July 3, 1944
She was born in post-blockade Leningrad Natalia Tenyakova — theater and film actress. "Baba Shura" from "Love and Doves."
The theater is better than life because there are very few cynics there. Even in church, not everyone is a believer, but in the theater, there is faith.
My engineer parents were far from artistic, but they loved to sing and dance.
According to the actress's recollections, she was born "very premature." However, by the time she entered the Leningrad State Institute of Theatre, Music, and Cinematography, she was already "a fat girl with two pigtails." After graduating, she was assigned to work for two years at the Leningrad Lenin Komsomol Theatre.
Then - 10 years of a brilliant acting career at the Bolshoi Drama Theatre Georgy Tovstonogov. There, in 1965, she met her future husband, an actor and director. Sergei Yursky. In 1979, she moved with him to Moscow—he was accused of "dissidence" and was barred from working in either theater or film. Tenyakova was begged to stay at the Bolshoi Drama Theater, but in protest against the persecution of her husband, she changed her surname to Yurskaya.
It was a ban on the profession. The city betrayed us. We had to flee.
In Moscow, the couple was hosted by the Mossovet Theatre.
In 1988, Tenyakova, as she had dreamed, became an actress at the Moscow Art Theatre (immediately upon her arrival from Leningrad Oleg Efremov He refused to take her into the troupe due to censorship restrictions. She performed on his stage until the end of her life.
For a long time, she ignored cinema, preferring the theater. She appeared in only a few films: "The Elder Sister," "Storm Over Belaya," and "The Green Carriage." She admitted that she never accepted "people's false attitudes toward each other and toward the material."
I've never enjoyed acting in films. They film it in sections, sometimes starting from the end, sometimes from the middle. Theatre is a different story: you pull yourself together, take a deep breath, and perform in one breath from beginning to end.
The exception was the film Vladimir Menshov "Love and Doves" (1984), where she joined her husband, became famous nationwide. When she arrived to play "Baba Shura," she was 38 (and "Uncle Mitya," Sergei Yursky, was 47). The entire crew flocked to watch their virtuoso improvisation on set.
They made me up beyond recognition. My whole face was dented afterwards. Do you know what prosthetic makeup is? When you take it off, the imprint remains on your face for a long time—you can iron it out.
In 2004, at 60, she played the lead role in the television play "The Forest" Kirill Serebrennikov based on the play by Alexander Ostrovsky - an elderly landowner who falls in love with a young man.
She's like a cat—it's impossible to outplay her. Tenyakova is an incredible organic being. A magma-like being. She's great, and everyone knows it.
(Kirill Serebrennikov)
She died of heart disease on June 18, 2025, in Moscow, at the age of 80—two weeks before her birthday and six years after the death of Sergei Yursky.
I believe the only thing dangerous to a relationship is boredom. Two people shouldn't be bored with each other.
