January 24, 1942
During the siege Leningrad I was born Lyudmila Savelyeva — the actress who played Natasha Rostova in the Oscar-winning War and Peace.
I remember one American woman, doing my hair before the ceremony, said: “If your War and Peace doesn’t win an Oscar, then there is no justice.”
Her father fought at the front. To prevent her daughter from starving to death, her mother had to feed her wood glue. The girl tried her first chocolate bar at age three and was hospitalized with severe food poisoning, as her body couldn't digest it.
She began studying ballet at the age of 11. In 1961, she graduated from the Vaganova Choreographic School. She performed at the Leningrad Academic Kirov Opera and Ballet Theatre (now the Mariinsky Theatre).
She made her film debut in 1964, at the age of 22, playing in the ballet film Sleeping Beauty.
A year later, she was chosen for the role of Natasha Rostova in the film epic Sergei Bondarchuk "War and Peace." I had to give up ballet for the filming.
I was traveling back and forth until I started fainting on set. They told me I had to choose. I had to give up ballet. A dancer's life is short, but acting in films can last quite a long time.
In 1969, she received an Oscar statuette—the first in the history of Soviet cinema (the award was intended for Bondarchuk, but he was busy filming another movie). She appeared on stage in a luxurious white dress, as suggested by the Americans (a reference to Natasha Rostova). She called her dress "Gone with the Wind."
At first, everyone congratulated me, calling me every time, but everything changed as soon as I returned to the country. For the first time in my life, some officials met me at the airport, immediately took my statuette, and muttered that the USSR had its own worthy awards.
The role of Natasha Rostova brought Savelyeva worldwide fame: in France, girls were named after her character, and Japan declared 1972 the "Year of Lyudmila Savelyeva."
Over the five years that this epochal work was being filmed, I became very close to my character and became very similar to her.
We had no right to distort a single word. We had 28 consultants on the film, including literary ones.
She starred in 20 films. Among the most famous are "The Run", "The Seagull", the French-Soviet-Italian drama "Sunflowers" (with the participation of Sophia Loren и Marcello Mastroianni), “The Headless Horseman” and “It was the fourth year of the war” (she played with her husband Alexander Zbruev).
I only played what I wanted, what I could. That's what Tolstoy taught me. That's why I refused to play girls—young, pretty, lively, spontaneous… I remember one director suggesting, "It's like Natasha Rostova with a little humor."
Filmed at Sergei Solovyov — “Alien White and Pockmarked”, “The Black Rose is the Emblem of Sorrow, the Red Rose is the Emblem of Love”, “Tender Age”, “Anna Karenina”.
Today she turns 84.
