Alexander Ustyugov can be called an incredibly passionate person. The range of his passions is very wide: from rock music to antiques. But, most importantly, Ustyugov is one of the most sought-after artists today, whose schedule is booked months in advance. Last fall, the NTV channel showed the eleventh season of the series “Cop Wars,” in which Alexander played the head of the criminal investigation department, Roman Shilov. It is curious that over the many years of filming in this series, the artist managed to get divorced, get married and get divorced again.
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Biography of Alexander Ustyugov
Alexander Ustyugov is an actor whose name is well known to connoisseurs of domestic television series, especially the action-packed series “Cop Wars,” which is inextricably linked with Ustyugov’s character, the head of the homicide department, Roman Shilov.
Actor Alexander Ustyugov
However, Ustyugov is known far beyond the television industry: a talented theater actor, a promising stage director, an amateur photographer, a musician and a motorcyclist - the actor’s life is replete with bright events, which are invariably reflected in the images he created.
Childhood and family
Alexander Ustyugov was born in the town of Ekibastuz, which is now part of the Pavlodar region of Kazakhstan. The future actor’s mother worked as a kindergarten teacher, and his father was a skilled carpenter.
Alexander Ustyugov in childhood and youth
It is worth noting that Alexander’s path to art was, without exaggeration, thorny. After graduating from eight classes of secondary school, Alexander entered local vocational school No. 18, choosing to specialize as an electrician in the repair, installation and dismantling of mining equipment. In parallel with his studies, Ustyugov worked in the Vostochny coal mine and attended the art school named after. S.P. Panteleeva.
From the personal archive of Alexander Ustyugov
In 1993, Alexander graduated from both a vocational school and an art school, after which he continued his studies at the Academy of Railways in Omsk. He studied full-time for one and a half years, after which he transferred to the evening class, as he got a job as a lighting installer at the Omsk Youth Theater, cherishing the dream of the stage in his soul. The theater became an important part of Alexander's life, and in 1996 he left the academy and applied to the Omsk Regional College of Culture and Art, which he subsequently graduated with honors. As a student, he was involved in almost all performances of the Youth Theater.
Young Alexander Ustyugov in the TV series “Petya the Magnificent”
At the same time, Alexander did not give up his dream of Moscow, and three times during the summer holidays at college he tried to pass the competition at the Shchukin School, failing over and over again. At 22, the young man realized that he had one last chance left. It was not only about the age limit, but about internal feelings. This time he arrived in Moscow several months before submitting documents, but there was no money for rented housing, and the actor took a fancy to an attic in an unfinished high-rise building in Ramenskoye, arranged a corner there, and found a lake nearby for hygienic needs. The fourth attempt was crowned with success - he became a happy student of “Pike”, enrolling in Rodion Ovchinnikov’s course. Cop wars. Alexander Ustyugov Thus, unprecedented efficiency and a huge thirst for knowledge ultimately brought Alexander Ustyugov to the theater stage.
First steps in big cinema
After success in theatrical work, Ustyugov decided to connect his future with culture and in 1999 moved to Moscow, where he entered the Boris Shchukin Theater Institute. He continued to study hard and demonstrated good acting, initially mainly in university productions.
After graduating from university, he was accepted into the troupe of the Russian Academic Youth Theater, this happened in 2003. This was precisely the turning point in his career. Literally after a few weeks of working in the troupe, his filmography began; his first role (in an episode, of course) occurred in 2003 in the film “Lord of the Ether.” After that there were several more small roles.
Actor career
Alexander Ustyugov’s first film role was the killer Matvey Salakhov from the series “Code of Honor”. This was followed by an episodic role as a doorman in “Turkish March”, small roles in the melodrama “Lord of the Air”, the tragicomedy “Silver Lily of the Valley-2” and the action-packed series “Operation Color of the Nation”.
One of the first film roles of Alexander Ustyugov (“Turkish March”)
In 2003, Alexander Ustyugov also made his directorial debut - as his graduation work, he staged the play “The Dawns Here Are Quiet,” in which he also participated as an actor. Alexander Ustyugov in the program “Who’s There” (2004) After graduating from the Shchukin School in 2003, Alexander was invited to RAMT, where he played in the production of “Shadow”, for which he was awarded the “Moscow Debuts” prize. This was followed by the role of Parfen Rogozhin in the play “The Idiot” by Regis Aubadie, which added to Ustyugov’s collection of “The Seagull” awards.
Alexander Ustyugov in the play “Shadow”
In 2004, Ustyugov was approved for the main role - investigator Roman Shilov - in the TV series “Cop Wars”. In the first season, his hero was involved in a complicated crime, and the city’s crime bosses were hunting for his life, and they were helped in this by corrupt police officers, real werewolves in uniform.
The first “Cop Wars”: Alexander Ustyugov as Roman Shilov
After the first season came the second, after the second - the third... In 2020, the tenth anniversary season of “Cop Wars” was released. Alexander Ustyugov was often asked whether Roman Shilov had become boring to him over the years, to which the actor invariably responded with the question: “Aren’t you bored of doing the same thing at a factory for twenty years?” Of course, Alexander admitted, there is a slight fatigue from the image, dialogue and plot, but this is more likely not boredom, but a habit of the character. “I myself am curious how long Shilov will live,” Ustyugov joked.
“Cop Wars-10”: the same Roman Shilov
In 2020, the actor became a key actor in another “long-running series” called “The Plague.” Ustyugov’s desire to try something radically new was finally realized - his hero, a bandit named Tabak, was the complete opposite of Shilov: cold, calculating and cruel. Alexander spoke very warmly about the film crew and colleagues - Sergei Zharkov, Sergei Selina, Ekaterina Klimova and others, although he admitted: “The fans did not like to see me in the role of a scoundrel.”
In "The Plague" Alexander Ustyugov played an anti-hero
But “The Plague” gave new life to Ustyugov’s old hobby. The soundtrack of the project required music, and the actor, by the way, an excellent guitarist, assembled a team and recorded two songs - “Postal Birds” and “Road to Paradise”, which can be heard in the series. But the matter did not end there. The actor continued to perform, and gave the group a name in honor of the city where he spent his childhood - “Ekibastuz”. Alexander Ustyugov and EKIBASTUZ – Road to Paradise
Music
Alexander tried to enroll in a music school as a child, but was unsuccessful. At the age of 14, the guy got a guitar, and he began to educate himself and play in front of friends. The idea of creating our own team arose already then. In his youth, his passion became rock and roll and Russian rock. This was a period of protest against the alleged imprisonment: Alexander grew his hair, wore an earring in his ear, his wardrobe consisted of black biker jackets and leather trousers. The artist’s favorite musical groups were “Alice”, “DDT”, “Kino”.
Alexander Ustyugov and the Ekibastuz group at the “Invasion” festival
In 2020, Alexander Ustyugov managed to found a musical group. The band received the name “Ekibastuz” in honor of the frontman’s hometown. The first solo performance of the musical group took place in November 2015 at the St. Petersburg club “Cosmonaut” and was a great success.
The Ekibastuz group’s repertoire includes more than a dozen soulful songs on the most important topics in the life of every person - honor, duty, war, love, homeland and others. The group still draws full houses today. In May 2020, “Ekibastuz” performed on the same stage at a gala concert together with Dmitry Bykovsky’s musical group “Old Friends”. It’s interesting that the artists starred together in “Cop Wars.”
Personal life of Alexander Ustyugov
For many years, Alexander Ustyugov was married to his former classmate, actress Yanina Sokolovskaya. The couple raised their daughter Evgenia (born 2007).
Alexander Ustyugov and Yanina Sokolovskaya were married for 10 years
In 2020, their ten-year marriage broke up. It was rumored that the reason was the infidelity of 39-year-old Ustyugov with 28-year-old actress Anna Ozar, daughter of oligarch Igor Ozar.
Alexander Ustyugov with his daughter Zhenya
Whether the romance between Ustyugov and Ozar really served as a catalyst for the collapse of the actor’s family life is not known for certain. But in September 2015, they actually got married and went on their honeymoon to France.
In 2020, Ustyugov married Anna Ozar
But already in January 2020, the spouses deleted each other from social networks, erased all photos together, and Ustyugov stopped wearing a wedding ring. A little later, journalists found out that the actor celebrated the New Year alone - with a bottle of whiskey.
In his daily life, Alexander Ustyugov enjoys boxing, motorcycles and artistic photography. After many years of studying and working in Moscow, he chose to move to St. Petersburg. He compared the capital to a “production facility,” while Northern Palmyra more than once called it a niche for peace, a place where you can live, breathe, love and just walk.
Still from the film “My Last Name is Shilov”
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The daughter of Ustyugov and Sokolovskaya is growing up as a creative child - she practices dancing, singing, delves into the intricacies of acting in a theater studio and has already made her debut at RAMT - Evgenia plays in the play “The Shore of Utopia”, in which she plays several roles at once.
Ustyugov would like to see his daughter more often, but this does not always work out - sometimes their schedules do not coincide, and when Alexander has free time, his daughter does not have the opportunity to meet.
“But then I accompany her to school, take her to the dance and wait until she finishes, that is, all communication happens on the road,” the actor shares.
Zhenya always looks forward to meeting his dad and loves spending his free time with him.
Alexander Ustyugov now
In November 2020, the military drama “28 Panfilov’s Men” was released. Alexander Ustyugov got the role of Private Moskalenko - a seasoned, seasoned fighter, a sharp-tongued daredevil. Filming, as Ustyugov admitted, was difficult; sometimes the film crew had to stay in the cold for 12 hours. “What was it like during the war if it was so hard for us, actors working in relatively comfortable conditions?” asked the actor. Together with him, the star of the series “Mysterious Passion” Alexei Morozov, Yakov Kucherevsky, Azmat Nigmatov, Oleg Fedorov and a whole galaxy of other talented artists worked on the film.
“28 Panfilov’s Men”: Alexander Ustyugov as Private Moskalenko
Ustyugov also took part in the filming of the historical blockbuster “Viking”, trying on the role of Yaropolk Svyatoslavich. The film, starring Danila Kozlovsky, told the story of Prince Vladimir’s rise to power.
Still from the movie "Viking"
It is known that the actor will soon appear in a number of high-profile projects. This includes the series “Golden Horde”, which is often called “the Russian answer to “Game of Thrones””, the multi-part drama about the life of android robots among people “Better than People” with Paulina Andreeva and Kirill Kyaro, the “Cop” series “Raid” and the melodrama “Leningrad Rhapsody”.
Still from the TV series “Raid”
