The life of Lyudmila Gurchenko in photos
Lyudmila Markovna Gurchenko, a future Soviet and Russian theater and film actress, pop singer, director, screenwriter, writer, was born in Kharkov on November 12, 1935.
Lyudmila Markovna Gurchenko was born on November 12, 1935 in Kharkiv. She was the only child in the family.
In 1953, Gurchenko entered the All-Russian State Institute of Cinematography for the course of S. Gerasimov and T. Makarova. Five years later, in 1958, she graduated from the Institute and worked in the Theater Studio of a film actor until 1964.
From 1964 to 1966, she was an actress of the Sovremennik Theater. In this theater, L. Gurchenko played mostly minor roles, participated in mass scenes. Lyudmila Gurchenko made her film debut in Jan Frid's The Road of Truth (1956).
In 1956, E. Ryazanov offered the third-year student Lyudmila Gurchenko the main role of Lenochka Krylova in the musical comedy "Carnival Night". Filming lasted only five months. The premiere took place on December 28. The film brought the actress a resounding success and triumph. The song "Five minutes" instantly flew around the country. L. Gurchenko has established herself as an actress with bright vocal and pop data.
In 1958, her talent was brilliantly manifested in another film — with an emphatically musical title — "The Girl with the Guitar". In this film, the young actress appeared sincere, believing in goodness, cheerful, full of strength.
Then Lyudmila Gurchenko starred in the melodrama "Walking" (1961), the dramas "Baltic Sky" (1961), "Work Settlement" (1966), the military drama "Roman and Francesca" (1960), the farce "The Marriage of Balzaminov" (1965) (pictured), the sports comedy "Bicycle Tamers" (1963).
And yet, in the 1960s and early 1970s, Gurchenko was hardly noticeable, even continuing to be filmed regularly. So until the release in 1974 of the production melodrama "Old Walls" (State Prize of the RSFSR, 1976), in which the actress played the director of a weaving factory, but without a touch of the typical features of the Soviet leader, Gurchenko with her more than 30 roles at that time remained as if turned off from the big cinema.
In the 1970s, musical films with Gurchenko's participation were released literally one after another. In 1972, she starred in the film "Tobacco Captain", in 1973 - in the film "Circus lights the lights", the next year — in "Straw Hat" (pictured), in 1975 — in "Heavenly Swallows", and a year later — in the film "Mama".
For the sake of a role in the musical film "Mama", Gurchenko even refused the role of the general's wife in one of Mikhalkov's best films — "An Unfinished Piece for a Mechanical Piano". During the filming of the movie "Mom", the clown Oleg Popov fell on the actress, as a result of which she received a broken leg. Gurchenko continued filming in a cast.
During this period, the directors are exploiting the musical abilities of the actress with might and main, but Lyudmila Gurchenko is trying to break out of the role of a "pop singer" imposed on her. She wanted to play dramatic roles and achieved her goal.
Interesting were her roles as Rita in the melodrama "Beloved woman mechanic Gavrilova" (1982) and waitress Vera Nefedova in the lyrical comedy Eldar Ryazanov "Train station for two" (1983). These works were awarded the Golden Eagle prizes — "For the best Female Role" — at the Manila Film Festival (1982) and VKF-83 in Leningrad.
In the same 1983, Lyudmila Gurchenko was recognized as the best actress of the year by a survey of the magazine "Soviet Screen".
In the 90s, the years of the collapse of Soviet cinema, the actress starred less often. Little good material was offered, and Gurchenko had to approach the roles more selectively. The actress skillfully repeated the previous images ("Prokhindiada-2", 1993), again played independent women invested with power ("Inhuman", 1990; "White Clothes", 1992), tried to defiantly break even from the framework of the plot narrative, turning the film into a variety monologue of the actress ("Listen, Fellini!..", 1993) or a musical benefit ("Love", 1993).
In search of new and unusual roles, she was forced to turn to the entreprise theater.
In 2000, the actress starred in another film by E. Ryazanov "Old Nags".
L. Gurchenko's entire creative career is accompanied by concert activities. The stage show of L. Gurchenko is the performances of one actor, where she is both a set designer, a costume designer, and a director.
In 1982, Lyudmila Gurchenko's book "My Adult Childhood" was published. Later, the actress published the books "Applause" and "Lucy, stop!" (2003).
The actress, who once starred in the film "The Recipe of her youth", never hid her years and the fact that she repeatedly lay down on the table of a plastic surgeon. Among Russian celebrities, she was a kind of record holder for the number of plastic surgeries: according to various sources, she made about 17 of them. In recent years, surgeons have warned the actress that operations at her age are unsafe, but she stated that she had to look good, and was not going to leave the stage until her death.
The last role of Lyudmila Markovna Gurchenko was a role in a musical, which premiered on the day of her 75th anniversary - November 12, 2010. This show is called "Markovna. Reboot", which combines a TV play, a musical and a variety show.
Lyudmila Gurchenko's first husband was Boris Andronikashvili, a screenwriter and historian, the son of writer B. Pilnyak and cousin of Georgian directors Georgy and Eldar Shengelai. They had a daughter Masha (1959), from whom Lyudmila Gurchenko has a granddaughter Elena. Gurchenko's second husband was actor Alexander Fadeev, the third was Joseph Kobzon, the fourth was musician Konstantin Kuperweis. Gurchenko's last husband was producer Sergey Senin (pictured), whom she met during the filming of the film "Sex Fairy Tale" by Vladimir Nabokov.
Shortly before her death, Lyudmila Gurchenko received a serious injury — she broke her hip neck during a walk. The actress underwent surgery. In early March, Gurchenko was discharged from the hospital and returned home. Sources in medical circles report that complications after surgery could also cause the death of the actress.