Oleg Basilashvili
Encyclopedia
Oleg Valerianovich Basilashvili is a well-known Soviet/Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

 and theatre
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...

 actor
Actor
An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...

 of Georgian
Georgia (country)
Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...

 and Polish
Poles
thumb|right|180px|The state flag of [[Poland]] as used by Polish government and diplomatic authoritiesThe Polish people, or Poles , are a nation indigenous to Poland. They are united by the Polish language, which belongs to the historical Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages of Central Europe...

 origin, as well as political figure in the former Soviet Union and in the new Russia.

Childhood

Oleg Valerianovich Basilashvili was born on September 26, 1934, in Moscow, USSR. His father, named Valerian Basilashvili, was a director of the Moscow Polytechnical College. His mother, named Irina
Ilyinskaya, was a teacher of linguistics.

His father made up a humorous story that his grandfather had once arrested a dangerous criminal, named Dzhugashvili, who was really Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...

. In reality Basilashvili's maternal grandfather was a Russian orthodox priest and an architect, who participated in the construction of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow. During the Second World War young Oleg Basilashvili was evacuated from Moscow to the Transcaucasian republic of Georgia. There young Basilashvili went to a primary school and lived with his paternal grandfather until the end of WWII.

Acting career

In 1956 Oleg Basilashvili graduated from the Acting School of the Moscow Art Theatre
Moscow Art Theatre
The Moscow Art Theatre is a theatre company in Moscow that the seminal Russian theatre practitioner Constantin Stanislavski, together with the playwright and director Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, founded in 1898. It was conceived as a venue for naturalistic theatre, in contrast to the melodramas...

 (MkHAT), where he had studied under Pavel Massalsky. His group was one of the most talented: among his group mates there was Yevgeniy Yevstigneyev
Yevgeniy Yevstigneyev
Yevgeniy Aleksandrovich Yevstigneyev was a prominent Soviet movie and theater actor and one of the founders of Moscow's Sovremennik Theatre. People's Artist of the USSR ....

, Mikhail Kozakov
Mikhail Kozakov
Mikhail Mikhailovich Kozakov was a Russian-Israeli film and theatre director and actor.- References :...

 and Tatiana Doronina
Tatiana Doronina
Tatiana Vasilyevna Doronina is a popular Soviet/Russian actress who has performed in movies and the theater. She is generally regarded as one of the most talented actresses of her generation and was named a People's Artist of the USSR in 1981....

, his first wife. He made his film debut as a young groom in film Nevesta (aka .. The Bride, 1956) by director Grigori Nikulin based on a story by Anton Chekhov
Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian physician, dramatist and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics...

. At that time together with his first wife, Tatiana Doronina, Basilashvili joined the troupe at the Bolshoi Drama Theatre (BDT) in Leningrad
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...

 under the leadership of the legendary director Georgi Tovstonogov. Since 1959 Basilashvili has been a permanent member of the troupe at the BDT in St. Petersburg. There his stage partners were such stars as Kirill Lavrov
Kirill Lavrov
Kirill Yuryevich Lavrov was a well-known Soviet and Russian film and theatre actor and director.-Childhood:Kirill Yuryevich Lavrov was born on September 15, 1925, in Leningrad, USSR . He was baptized by the Russian Orthodox Church of St. John the Divine in Lavrushinskoe Podvorie Monastery in...

, Tatyana Doronina, Alisa Freindlich
Alisa Freindlich
Alisa Brunovna Freindlich is a Soviet and Russian actress, People's Artist of the USSR.-Biography:Alisa Freindlich was born into the family of Bruno Freindlich, a prominent actor and People's Artist of the USSR. She is of German and Russian ancestry. Her father and paternal relatives were ethnic...

, Lyudmila Makarova, Svetlana Kryuchkova, Zinaida Sharko, Valentina Kovel, Innokenti Smoktunovsky, Oleg Borisov
Oleg Borisov
Oleg Ivanovich Borisov was a Russian film and theatre actor whose honors included the title of People's Artist of the USSR , two USSR State Prizes as well as the Volpi Cup .-Childhood and Youth:...

, Pavel Luspekayev
Pavel Luspekayev
Pavel Borisovich Luspekayev was a Ukrainian-Russian-Armenian actor who is best known for his role of Vereschagin in the classic Russian movie White Sun of the Desert....

, Sergei Yursky
Sergei Yursky
Sergei Yurievich Yursky is a Soviet/Russian stage and film actor, theatre director and screenwriter. His most notable role in the cinema is Ostap Bender in The Little Golden Calf.-Biography:...

, and many other remarkable Russian actors. Basilashvili's most memorable stage works were in the play Uncle Vanya
Uncle Vanya
Uncle Vanya is a play by the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov. It was first published in 1897 and received its Moscow première in 1899 in a production by the Moscow Art Theatre, under the direction of Konstantin Stanislavski....

by Anton Chekhov
Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian physician, dramatist and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics...

, Kholstomer
Kholstomer
"Kholstomer", also translated as "Strider", is one of the most striking stories in Russian literature. It was started by Leo Tolstoy in 1863 and left unfinished until 1886, when it was reworked and published as "Kholstomer: The Story of a Horse". Georgi Tovstonogov staged it in his theatre in 1975....

based on the eponymous story of Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...

, The Lower Depths
The Lower Depths
The Lower Depths is perhaps Maxim Gorky's best-known play. It was written during the winter of 1901 and the spring of 1902. Subtitled "Scenes from Russian Life," it depicted a group of impoverished Russians living in a shelter near the Volga. Produced by the Moscow Arts Theatre on December 18,...

by Maxim Gorky
Maxim Gorky
Alexei Maximovich Peshkov , primarily known as Maxim Gorky , was a Russian and Soviet author, a founder of the Socialist Realism literary method and a political activist.-Early years:...

, and other classic plays directed by Georgi Tovstonogov at the BDT in St. Petersburg.

Film career

Oleg Basilashvili shot to fame with his roles in films by director Eldar Ryazanov
Eldar Ryazanov
Eldar Aleksandrovich Ryazanov is a Soviet/Russian film director whose comedies, satirizing the daily life of the country, are very famous throughout the former Soviet Union....

. They collaborated in such popular films as Office Romance (1977), Station for Two (1982), The Promised Heavens (1991), and Predskazanie (1993), which became significant box-office hits. Among Basilashvili’s film partners were such actors as Alisa Freindlich
Alisa Freindlich
Alisa Brunovna Freindlich is a Soviet and Russian actress, People's Artist of the USSR.-Biography:Alisa Freindlich was born into the family of Bruno Freindlich, a prominent actor and People's Artist of the USSR. She is of German and Russian ancestry. Her father and paternal relatives were ethnic...

, Lyudmila Gurchenko
Lyudmila Gurchenko
Lyudmila Markovna Gurchenko was a popular Soviet and Russian actress, singer and entertainer.-Biography:Lyudmila was born in Kharkiv, Ukrainian SSR in 1935 to Mark Gavrilovich Gurchenko and Yelena Aleksandrovna Simonova-Gurchenko . Before the World War II they lived in a single room apartment on...

, Nikita Mikhalkov
Nikita Mikhalkov
Nikita Sergeyevich Mikhalkov is a Soviet and Russian filmmaker, actor, and head of the Russian Cinematographers' Union.Mikhalkov was born in Moscow into the distinguished, artistic Mikhalkov family. His great grandfather was the imperial governor of Yaroslavl, whose mother was a Galitzine princess...

, Nonna Mordyukova
Nonna Mordyukova
Noyabrina "Nonna" Viktorovna Mordyukova was a Soviet actress and People's Artist of the USSR...

, Evgeni Leonov, and Natalya Gundareva, among many other Soviet/Russian film actors.

His most acclaimed film role was made in collaboration with director Georgi Daneliya
Georgi Daneliya
Georgi Daneliya is a Soviet/Georgian/Russian film director, who became known throughout the Soviet Union for his "sad comedies" .Daneliya graduated from the Moscow Architecture Institute and worked as an architect...

 in a remarkable film Autumn Marathon
Autumn Marathon
Autumn Marathon is a 1979 Soviet comedy-drama, a winner of 1979 Venice Film Festival, San Sebastian Film Festival and 1980 Berlin Film Festival awards in the best director and best actor categories....

 (1979). The film is a cross-genre comedy and melodrama with a bitter humor and satire of the Soviet life. In it Basilashvili plays a man in his mid-life crisis, who is torn between two nice women, his wife and his mistress, and all three of them become entangled in the game of lies and personal demands, being at the same time strangled by the stagnant Soviet reality. Basilashvili co-created a memorable acting ensemble with such actors, as Natalya Gundareva, Evgeni Leonov, Marina Neyolova
Marina Neyolova
Marina Neyolova is a Soviet and Russian film and theater actress. She has appeared in 37 films since 1969.-Selected filmography:* Monologue * Errors of Youth * Autumn Marathon * The Barber of Siberia...

, and Nikolai Kryuchkov
Nikolai Kryuchkov
Nikolai Kryuchkov was a Soviet film actor. He appeared in 94 films between 1932 and 1993.-Selected filmography:* Okraina * By the Bluest of Seas * The Return of Maxim * The Vyborg Side * Salavat Yulayev...

. The film became a Soviet classic, and was awarded at International film festivals in Berlin and San Sebastian.

In the 1980s he appeared in eccentric films by Karen Shakhnazarov
Karen Shakhnazarov
Karen Georgievich Shakhnazarov is a Soviet and Russian-Armenian filmmaker, producer and screenwriter. He became the Director General of the Mosfilm studios in 1998.Shakhnazarov is the son of a prominent politician of Armenian descent, Georgy Shakhnazarov....

. Those were Kurer (The Messenger Boy) (1987), Gorod Zero (Zero City) (1988), and Sny (Dreams) (1993). Dreams, a wild comedy about Perestroika
Perestroika
Perestroika was a political movement within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during 1980s, widely associated with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev...

 is especially remarkable: in it Basilashvili tried on several images, those of a noble count from the past, a pornographer and a rock star.

In 2001 Oleg Basilashvili starred in Karen Shakhnazarov’s comedy Yady, ili vsemirnaya istoriya otravleniy (Poisons or the World History of Poisoning) (2001). The actor performed both as pensioner Prohorov and the Pope Alexander VI Borgia in it.

Among the actor’s other works of the early 21st century one can mention the role of Prof. Fyodorov in the historical film The Romanovs: A Crowned Family (2000) and General Yepanchin in the TV series The Idiot
The Idiot (TV series)
The Idiot is a costume drama TV series produced by Russia TV Channel in 2003 based on Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel with the same title.Series script is very close to original text of Dostoevsky and well-known Russian actors are playing in the film...

 (2003) directed by Vladimir Bortko
Vladimir Bortko
Vladimir Vladimirovich Bortko , born on May 7, 1946 in Moscow, is a Russian film director, screenwriter and producer.-Biography:...

 after the famous novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

Political career

During the 1990s he was a visible political figure in Russia, and was elected the representative of
Leningrad (St. Petersburg) in 1990. Eventually he became a member of the pro-democratic group of representatives in the Russian Parliament, and a supporter of such politicians as Anatoly Sobchak
Anatoly Sobchak
Anatoly Alexandrovich Sobchak was a Russian politician, a co-author of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, the first democratically elected mayor of Saint Petersburg, and a mentor and teacher of both Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev....

 and the first Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n President
President
A president is a leader of an organization, company, trade union, university, or country.Etymologically, a president is one who presides, who sits in leadership...

 Boris Yeltsin
Boris Yeltsin
Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was the first President of the Russian Federation, serving from 1991 to 1999.Originally a supporter of Mikhail Gorbachev, Yeltsin emerged under the perestroika reforms as one of Gorbachev's most powerful political opponents. On 29 May 1990 he was elected the chairman of...

. Oleg Basilashvili was a strong proponent of returning the original name to the city of St. Petersburg. He quit politics after 2000, and focused on his acting career.

Comeback

After a few years of his artistic hiatus, Oleg Basilashvili made a comeback with an impressive performance as Woland
Woland
Woland is a fictional character in the book The Master and Margarita by the Russian author Mikhail Bulgakov. Woland is the mysterious foreigner and professor whose visit to Moscow sets the plot rolling and turns the world upside-down. He appears differently to different people. "[t]he first says...

 in the TV miniseries The Master and Margarita (2005), an adaptation of the eponymous novel of Mikhail Bulgakov
Mikhail Bulgakov
Mikhaíl Afanásyevich Bulgákov was a Soviet Russian writer and playwright active in the first half of the 20th century. He is best known for his novel The Master and Margarita, which The Times of London has called one of the masterpieces of the 20th century.-Biography:Mikhail Bulgakov was born on...

 by director Vladimir Bortko. In his own words, Basilashvili played the character of Woland in resemblance of an authoritarian and manipulative bureaucrat, alluding to a Soviet-era dictator. Basilashvili created a
powerful interplay with a stellar ensemble of actors, such as Aleksandr Abdulov
Aleksandr Abdulov
Aleksandr Gavrilovich Abdúlov was a notable Soviet/Russian actor....

, Kirill Lavrov
Kirill Lavrov
Kirill Yuryevich Lavrov was a well-known Soviet and Russian film and theatre actor and director.-Childhood:Kirill Yuryevich Lavrov was born on September 15, 1925, in Leningrad, USSR . He was baptized by the Russian Orthodox Church of St. John the Divine in Lavrushinskoe Podvorie Monastery in...

, Anna Kovalchuk
Anna Kovalchuk
Anna Leonidovna Kovalchuk is a Russian actress.Anna Kovalchuk was born on June 15, 1977, in Neustrelitz , into a family of hereditary teachers. Anna's mother managed a kindergarten, her father was the teacher, and her grandfather was the principal. Anna has an older brother named Pavel.During her...

, Aleksandr Galibin
Aleksandr Galibin
Alexander Vladimirovich Galibin is a Russian actor noted for playing the Master in the miniseries The Master and Margarita .His acting career spans over three decades and includes such memorable roles as Tsar Nicholas II in Gleb Panfilov's The Romanovs: A Crowned Family .-Biography:Alexander...

, and other notable Russian actors.

Recognition

Oleg Basilashvili was designated People's Artist of the USSR
People's Artist of the USSR
People's Artist of the USSR, also sometimes translated as National Artist of the USSR, was an honorary title granted to citizens of the Soviet Union.- Nomenclature and significance :...

 (1984). He was awarded the State Prize and was decorated by the Russian government.
  • Order of the Red Banner of Labour
    Order of the Red Banner of Labour
    The Order of the Red Banner of Labour was an order of the Soviet Union for accomplishments in labour and civil service. It is the labour counterpart of the military Order of the Red Banner. A few institutions and factories, being the pride of Soviet Union, also received the order.-History:The Red...

     (1979)
  • Order of Merit for the Fatherland
    Order of Merit for the Fatherland
    The Order of Merit for the Fatherland was instituted on 2 March 1994 by Presidential Decree. The statutes describe it as a decoration for merit, not an order of knights....

    :
    • 3rd class (5 February 2009) - for outstanding contribution to the development of domestic theatrical art and many years of fruitful activity
    • 4th class (13 February 2004) - for outstanding contribution to the development of domestic theatrical art
  • Order of Friendship
    Order of Friendship
    The Order of Friendship is a state decoration of Russia established by decree # 442 of March 2, 1994 of the President of the Russian Federation....

     (17 December 1994) - for services to the people associated with the development of Russian statehood, the achievements in labor, science, culture, arts, strengthening friendship and cooperation between nations
  • People's Artist of USSR (1984)
  • Honored Artist of the RSFSR (1969)
  • People's Artist of RSFSR (1977)
  • State Prize of the RSFSR (1979) - for his role as Samokhvalova in the movie "Office Romance"
  • Prize of the Government of St. Petersburg in the field of literature, art and architecture
  • The award "Gold soffit" for Best Actor (1997)
  • The award "Golden Mask" award for Best Actor (2009) - the role of Prince K. in the play "Uncle's Dream"
  • International Theatre Prize in 2009 in the category "for his contribution to Russian theatre"
  • Honorary Member of Russian Academy of Arts
  • Presidential Order of Light (2010, Georgia)

External links

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