Alexander Sergeevich Lazarev Александр Сергеевич Лазарев |
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Born |
Leningrad, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union |
January 3, 1938
Died | May 2, 2011 Moscow, Russian Federation |
(aged 73)
Occupation | Actor |
Years active | 1961–2010 |
Spouse(s) | Svetlana Nemolyaeva |
Awards | People's Artist of the RSFSR (1977) |
Alexander Sergeyevich Lazarev (Алекса́ндр Серге́евич Ла́зарев; January 3, 1938 – May 2, 2011) was a Soviet and Russian theater and film actor, the People's Artist of Russia and the USSR State Prize laureate (both 1977). A Moscow Mayakovsky Theater veteran (where throughout his fifty years career he played more than fifty parts) Lazarev appeared in more than 100 films, including One More Thing About Love (Ещё раз про любовь, 1968) which made him famous.
Alexander Lazarev was born in Leningrad, to the artist and designer Sergey Nikolayevich Lazarev (1899–1984) and Olympiada Kuzminichna Lazareva (née Tarasova, (1907–1996). The family survived the first month of the Siege, then managed to get out of the city and make it to Orenburg. In 1944 they returned home and the next year Alexander went to school. By the time of graduation he’s made a decision to become an actor, citing later Robert Taylor's performance in Waterloo Bridge as the major influence. In 1955 Lazarev joined the Young actors' studio at the Moscow Art Theater. After a short stint at the Nikolay Akimov-led Saint Petersburg Comedy Theatre, he moved to Mayakovsky Theater, led at the time by Nikolay Okhlopkov where the part of Boytsov the electrician in Aleksei Arbuzov's The Irkutsk Story was his first success.
In 1961 Lazarev debuted in film, in thriller melodrama Free Wind (Вольный ветер, 1961), based on Isaak Dunayevsky's operetta of the same name. Among his other notable theatre roles of the 1960s were the sailor anarchist Gushcha in Between the Rainfalls (Okhlopkov's last production there), uber-lieutenant Schering in The Defector (1964) and Varavvin in Pyotr Fomenko-directed The Death of Tarelkin (1966). The leading part of physicist Yevdokimov in Georgy Natanson's 1968 film One More Thing About Love (Ещё раз про любовь, co-starring Tatyana Doronina) brought Lazarev nationwide acclaim.