September 2, 1944
He was born in Moscow, into a family of metallurgical teachers. Alexander Filippenko. Actor and theater director. Azazello from "The Master and Margarita." Chernenko from "Patient No. 1." He turns 81.
If an actor has any mission on this earth, it's the opportunity to prove to all of humanity that pop isn't just vulgar jokes and lip-synced songs. It's a high theatrical platform for communicating with an intelligent and attentive audience.
He spent his childhood in Alma-Ata. He studied at the local House of Pioneers and even performed in the adult play “The Soldier and the Snake.”
In 1967, he graduated from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and worked as a senior engineer at the Institute of Geochemistry at the Russian Academy of Sciences. As a student, he played in the KVN (Club of the Funny and Inventive) team and continued his studies in the theater studio.
In 1969, at 25, he joined the Taganka Theatre. In 1974, he graduated from the Shchukin Theatre School and devoted the next 20 years to the Vakhtangov Theatre.
He has appeared in over 100 films, including two adaptations of The Master and Margarita: in 1994, Yuri Kara in the role of Koroviev, in 2005 - Vladimir Bortko in the role of Azazello.
In 2000, he played Vladimir Lenin in The Romanovs. In 2021, he played Leonid Brezhnev in World Champion.
In Putin's Russia, he directed the Mono-Duet-Trio at the Mosconcert, performed on the stage of the Mossovet Theatre and the Gogol Center Theatre. He performed one-man shows at the Direct Speech lecture hall. Gogol, Zoshchenko, Dovlatov, Solzhenitsyn.
In 2001, he signed an open letter in defense of NTV. In 2003, he called for an end to the war in Chechnya. He participated in protests, including on Bolotnaya Square and the "March of Truth." He spoke out in support of political prisoners and the installation of a memorial to the victims of Stalin's repressions.
In 2014, he condemned the “Crimean Spring” and Putin’s policies in Ukraine.
The amount of hypocrisy and lies exceeds all possibilities of penetrating it. They distort and rewrite history as they please, as if there were no witnesses left.
In modern Russia, a country of moral monsters, smiling slaves, and thick-headed thugs, people have stopped noticing vulgarity, because Soviet Russia has developed its own, special kind of vulgarity, combining despotism with a fake culture.
In 2023, he played the role of the penultimate General Secretary of the USSR, Konstantin Chernenko, in the film Rezo Gigineishvili "Patient No. 1." Filming began in early 2022 due to a lack of funding, and the shoot had to be completed in 17 days. On the final day of filming, the war with Ukraine broke out. The film won the independent film award "White Elephant" for Best Actor. It was not released in Russia.
Power is taken, but never given up.
("Patient No. 1")
In May 2022, he posted on his Facebook page with wishes of love to his friends in Ukraine. In the photo, he sat at a table wearing Ukrainian clothing—an embroidered shirt.
I remember Kyiv only through Gogol's words: "With some vague feeling, Chichikov gazed at the houses, walls, fences, and streets, which, God knows, he was destined to see again in his life." In my life, obviously not, but in my memories—Dovzhenko Studio, chestnut trees, friends, comfort, and warmth.
The post garnered about a hundred comments and around ten thousand likes. Soon after, venue organizers began canceling Filippenko's concerts, and the Mossovet Theatre did not renew its contract.
In 2023 he left Russia and lives in Vilnius (Lithuania) and continues to perform on stage at the Old Theatre in Vilnius. In the spring of 2024, he played Stalin and Woland in the play "The Totalitarian Regime" based on the play Mikhail Bulgakov (premiered in Riga, Latvia).
Last birthday, he played Putin in a private reading of his daughter's play. Alexandra Filippenko based on the play by a Ukrainian writer Sasha Denisova "The Hague" (a satirical fantasy about the trial of the Russian leadership, headed by President Vladimir Putin, premiered in 2023 in Bulgaria. In the finale, the verdict is passed not by the judges, but by a girl who lost all her family in the war).
We thought long and hard about how to celebrate my 80th birthday, and my daughter produced this performance. What better way to celebrate an 80th birthday?
