19 Dec 1944
Born in Moscow Anastasia Vertinskaya — "a Soviet actress with an un-Soviet appearance." She turns 81.
You have to constantly turn your back on the unfavorable mise-en-scène
Father is a poet, singer and actor Alexander Vertinsky, mother is an artist and film actress Lydia Tsirgvava.
As a child, she dreamed of becoming a ballerina, but she was rejected because she was considered “too big.”
At 15, she played her first – and immediately stellar – role, Assol, in Scarlet Sails.
Despite its box office success—23 million people saw the film in 1961—she hated Scarlet Sails because it “made her famous and deprived her of the opportunity to go shopping in peace.”
I'm the opposite of that girl: I never waited for any princes, and the Scarlet Sails never came my way. Becoming an actress without suffering is impossible.
That same year, 1961, she played the lead role in the film "The Amphibian Man" (the director was looking for an actress with "the sky in her eyes"). For the filming, she learned to swim brilliantly and refused to use stunt doubles. However, she was still criticized for appearing in a bathing suit and changing her dress too often.
The film's box office success was even greater, with 65 million viewers. However, Vertinskaya was dismissive of it as well.
A banal underwater film based on a classic work of fiction was being shot. No one knew it would become so popular.
Having joined the Moscow Pushkin Theatre (without any theatre training), she toured extensively across the country. By the age of 18, her popularity had become a challenge.
Ever since then, I've been afraid of crowds. In Soviet times, we didn't have bodyguards. Not only did people recognize me, but everyone wanted to touch me.
In 1963, she entered the Shchukin Higher Theatre School because she “maniacally” wanted to become an actress.
There was intense interest in her: a mixture of envy and awe. Each of her works became a hotly debated experiment. Everyone ran: "Vertinskaya is about to play!"
(classmate and future husband, director Nikita Mikhalkov)
In 1964, after her role as Ophelia in Hamlet, 20-year-old Vertinskaya was called “the most talented heart of Soviet cinema.”
In 1967, at 23, she played Lisa Bolkonskaya in the film epic War and Peace and Kitty Shcherbatskaya in Anna Karenina.
In 1975, she won a British Academy Award for Best Olivia in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. Despite this, in the theater—Vertinskaya performed at the Sovremennik and the Moscow Art Theater—she was often relegated to extras (directors were unsure what to do with a girl "not from the common people"). The times demanded different heroines—rosy-cheeked and cheerful activists. She had to artificially "simplify" her appearance to fit the stereotypes: "stuff cotton wool up your nose, paint on freckles, get a bowl cut."
I'm not cut out for the roles of steelworker or social worker. I don't have it not only in appearance, but also in life, and I don't know the pathos of it.
Since 1989, with the beginning of perestroika, she “catapulted from the walls of the theater” and the USSR – she taught acting in Oxford and Paris.
In the second half of the 90s, she hosted her own programs, “Golden Section” and “Other Shores,” on ORT, about “people who go against the tide and who win.”
In 1994 she starred in Yuri Kara in "The Master and Margarita" - the film was released only in 2011.
In the 2000s, she retired from stage work: “I’d done enough in film” and didn’t want to “play a killer’s mother.”
A profession is temporary. You need to re-evaluate yourself at least seven times throughout your life—otherwise, you'll never succeed!
In March 2024, she stated that she had mixed feelings about artists who had left Russia and shamed them for making negative statements about their homeland.