Vija Artmane
| Vija Artmane | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Alīda Artmane August 21, 1929 Sēme parish, Latvia |
| Died | October 11, 2008 (aged 79) Strenči, Latvia |
| Occupation | Actress |
Alīda "Vija" Artmane (August 21, 1929 in Kaive, Sēme parish – October 11, 2008 in Strenči) was a Latvian theatre and cinema actress.
Artmane was born Alīda Artmane at the time when Latvia was a sovereign nation. Her father, Franz (Fritz) Artmann, of Baltic German ancestry, died in a tragic accident aged 19, just four months before she was born. Her Polish mother Anna Zaborowska survived as a single mother by doing seasonal agricultural jobs. As a young girl, Artmane grew up playing in the fields; she was fond of wild flowers and learned to make flower arrangements and dolls in the Latvian traditional style. While her mother worked for a landlord, her master sent young Artmane to study music and dance at a ballet class for couple of years. However, at the age of 10, young Artmane became a shepherd girl. She worked with a herd of cows for over five years, and survived until the end of the Second World War. In 1946 she graduated from secondary school and had a dream of becoming a lawyer in order to make the world a better place. At the same time she was involved in amateur acting at her school, and became interested in film and theatre, and eventually her passion for acting prevailed.
After the war in 1946 Artmane moved to Riga, and began her studies at the Daile Theatre Second Studio, eventually staying there as member of the troupe for the next 50 years. At the very beginning of her acting career she made the inevitable sacrifices, such as abandoning her favorite countryside, her cows, and changing her first name to Vija, upon a hint from her teacher and for artistic reasons. From 1946 to 1949 Artmane studied acting under the tutelage of the Latvian theatre director Eduards Smiļģis, the original founder of the troupe. From 1949 - 1998 Artmane was the leading star of the troupe at the Daile Theatre in Riga. She played her best stage roles under the directorship of Smiļģis. Her most memorable stage works were such classic roles as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet (1953), and Ophelia in Hamlet among other Shakespeare plays. Artmane also created important roles in Latvian plays such as Indulis and Ārija and Fire and Night under the direction of the National Actor of Latvia Rainis. She was critically acclaimed for her stage works in Russian plays, such as her passionate performance as Tolstoy's heroine Anna Karenina; she also played in Tolstoy's War and Peace, in Gogol's Dead Souls, and other classic Russian plays. After the death of Smiļģis, in 1966, Artmane gradually switched to contemporary plays, but she also continued to perform some of her classic stage roles during the 1970s and 1980s.
...
Wikipedia