Biography of Oleg Basilashvili
Oleg Basilashvili is one of the pillars of Soviet and Russian theater and cinema, a great actor of our time. His roles cannot be confused with anyone else's. Infinitely beloved by the audience Andrey Buzykin from the “Autumn Marathon”. Intelligent Platon Ryabinin from “Station for Two.” Woland from “The Master and Margarita” evokes mystical awe. His voice is soulful, memorable, always recognizable, and has become a “voice-over” dozens of times.
In the photo: Oleg Basilashvili
Winner of many regalia and awards. People's Artist of the Soviet Union. Recipient of three orders “For Services to the Fatherland.” Honorary citizen of Tbilisi and St. Petersburg. In 2019, Oleg Valerianovich celebrated his 85th birthday.
Basilashvili's career, or Enjoy your bath!
Oleg Valerianovich’s accidental debut was the film “The Foundling”: while riding a bicycle, he, along with other boys, got into the camera lens during the filming of the film. In 1956, he played in the film “The Bride,” but this appearance went unnoticed by the viewer.
Oleg was accepted into the Bolshoi Drama Theater by his first wife Tatyana Doronina, with whom he lived for 8 years. In the BDT, Basilashvili played Khlestakov from “The Government Inspector”, Serpukhovsky from “The History of a Horse”, Basov “Summer Residents”, Voinitsky “Uncle Vanya”.
Photo: Maxim Blokhin/TASS
All-Union fame was given to Basilashvili by Samokhvalov from “Office Romance.” The film was released in 1977. In 1979, he played the main role in Georgy Danelia’s work “Autumn Marathon”, and in 1982 viewers were able to see him in the film “Station for Two” in the role of a positive character - a touching and noble prisoner. Basilashvili’s hero, Platon Ryabinin, had a kiss with Lyudmila Gurchenko. But the actor refused, which is why the script had to be rewritten.
“At the Station I met the charming Lyusya Gurchenko and was struck by her talent and charm. I was shy, embarrassed, and then there were love scenes, shooting eyes, kissing and so on! No, no, I’m not a “hero-lover,” my subconscious told me, and only thanks to Eldar and Lyusa, who designed my costume and hairstyle, even wrote the text for me in the love scene, I gradually found myself,” recalls Oleg Basilashvili.
Another significant appearance in the cinema can be called the film adaptation of the novel “The Master and Margarita”, where Oleg Valerianovich played Woland. At that time, the mini-series won the universal love of the audience.
Childhood and family
Born in the fall of 1934 in Moscow, the boy's parents named him Oleg. Father, Valerian Noshrevanovich Basilashvili, a native of an ancient Georgian family, was the director of the Moscow Polytechnic College of Communications named after Vadim Podbelsky, although in his youth he studied at the Institute of Eastern Peoples, and then transferred to the ethnographic department of the university.
Oleg Basilashvili in childhood
There he met his future wife, Irina Sergeevna Ilyinskaya, a linguist who became a doctor of philology and the author of several specialized books, including a dictionary of the Pushkin language. Oleg's mother took part in an attempt to reform syntax and Russian spelling. The actor later recalled that both he and his grandmother were involved in the work, with whom they filled out hundreds of cards together.
Parents of Oleg Basilashvili. The future actor sits in his mother's arms
Irina Sergeevna’s employees gathered in their kitchen and were also doing this. They smoked, argued, even shouted. The work lasted for several years, and it was voluntary enthusiasm. After the publication of the first volume of the dictionary (1956) in Literaturnaya Gazeta, it was criticized to smithereens, and Oleg’s mother had her first heart attack.
The second volume might not have appeared if not for Roman Yakobson, a famous linguist, who came to the Soviet Union and spoke at some high-level meeting. He congratulated advanced Soviet science on two great achievements: the launch of the first artificial Earth satellite and the publication of the first volume of the Pushkin language dictionary. And the attitude towards the work of Irina Ilyinskaya and her comrades changed.
Oleg’s maternal grandfather, Sergei Ilyinsky, graduated from the Moscow Theological Seminary, but did not become a priest; he became an architect, according to whose design the Church of the Holy Martyrs Adrian and Natalia was built in Babushkino.
Grandfather and grandmother of Oleg Basilashvili
Grandmother, powerful and uncompromising, was a wonderful mistress of the house and the center of a family of six - Oleg himself, Zhora’s half-brother, whom dad took with him from Georgia, dad himself, mom, grandfather and grandmother. The boy loved her very much, despite being punished with a wet towel for stealing. But, as Basilashvili says, he remembered for the rest of his life that stealing is a sin. According to the actor, when his father went to the front in 1941, and his family was evacuated to Tbilisi during the Great Patriotic War, the most terrible test for the boy was hunger. He even developed tuberculosis, which was later somehow cured.
Young Oleg Basilashvili in evacuation
In 1943, everyone except Zhora, who went missing in action during the war, returned to Moscow. The family returned to their three rooms on Pokrovka. Oleg was sent to the third grade of a capital school, but the boy, who found school subjects difficult, dreamed of the theater:
“I did poorly at school and didn’t aspire to anything else. Mathematics is a complete grave. And then the Art Theater appeared on my way, which fascinated me because you were not in a theater, not in a room where wonderful actors spoke other people’s words in other people’s voices. And I saw worlds. This is what made the theater different. The world of Maeterlinck’s “Blue Bird”: We haven’t found the blue bird, children, maybe you will grow up and find it and help your neighbor? I still feel it. Nemirovich’s “Three Sisters” is also still there. And I wanted to go there, to that world. Not the one in which I lived - the world of offices, military registration and enlistment offices, fat stores. And I was ready not to be an actor, but to wash the floors there. I even thought - what a strange person I was! – I thought: the Nazis will attack Moscow again, they will approach the Art Theater, and I will lie down there, on the roof with a machine gun and defend it. Moreover, I did not have such an attitude towards any of the other theaters. There was no moral glue in them, and at the Moscow Art Theater this was the main thing.”
His desire to become an actor was met with hostility by his father, who considered the acting profession unworthy of a man. Throughout his adult life, Basilashvili secretly tried to prove to him that this was not so. One day Valerian Noshrevanovich came to a performance with the participation of his son and after the curtain told him that he was wrong. And this was the most important recognition of the correctness of the path.
Job
After graduating from university, Ksenia Basilashvili decided to try herself in radio journalism. She became a freelance correspondent for the popular radio “Echo of Moscow” in St. Petersburg.
After some time, Galina Starovoitova was found murdered. There weren’t enough journalists to investigate and publicize this case, so they called Ksenia. She went to the prosecutor's office for an interview. As Basilashvili says, she was scared, but she understood the necessity of this matter. She pulled herself together and completed this task brilliantly. Thus, the girl proved her professional suitability and showed her skills as a journalist. Afterwards, Ksenia Basilashvili flew to Moscow and stayed there. It was as if she and her father had switched places. Oleg Basilashvili, who is a native Muscovite, moved to St. Petersburg, and his daughter moved to Moscow. In the capital, Ksenia lived in a communal apartment that previously belonged to her grandfather, a church architect, and in which, accordingly, Oleg was born and lived for some time. True, his daughter rented only one room.
Father and daughter see each other often when Oleg comes to Moscow to play in enterprise performances. From time to time you can also see them in cafes in the Pokrovka area. It is clear how much the daughter loves her father. She remembers their walks in the park, visiting the Tretyakov Gallery. Ksenia's father instilled a lot in his daughter, including a love of art. The second degree she received, management of museums and galleries, was also chosen under the influence of her father.
Youth, Moscow Art Theater, first family and BDT
Contrary to his father’s prohibitions, Basilashvili applied to the School-Studio of his beloved Moscow Art Theater and entered there the first time, taking the course of teacher Pavel Massalsky. Oleg recalled his studies as serious work, no special student stories about get-togethers, parties, or a free life.
First-year students of the Moscow Art Theater: Basilashvili, Pobol, Kozakov, Lyubimov
Mikhail Kozakov, Viktor Sergachev, Evgeny Evstigneev, who later became famous actors, studied with him. Among his comrades was also the first beauty of the course, the talented Leningrader Tatyana Doronina. Falling in love and a passionate romance turned into their wedding in their third year. According to the memoirs of teacher Ivan Tarkhanov, the celebration was celebrated in his apartment, modestly, even without a wedding dress and wedding rings. It was 1955, and the newlyweds were Komsomol members to the core.
Tatyana Doronina and Oleg Basilashvili in their youth
A year later, the family left for Stalingrad, where Oleg was assigned. Tatyana was offered to stay at the Moscow Art Theater, but the girl was already familiar with the feat of the Decembrist wives and refused in order to be with her husband. Alas, at that time there was an episode that would subsequently lead to the final separation of the couple. Doronina wrote about him in her memoirs.
Oleg Basilashvili as Lieutenant Krieger (Lermontov, Moscow Art Theater)
Oleg was invited to star in “The Bride” and immediately to the main role, Andrei Andreevich. He left for filming, and soon his young wife came to visit her husband to tell him serious news - she was expecting a child. And I found an unsightly picture in my husband’s room - he was drinking with actress Tatyana Piletskaya, who also starred in the film.
Basilashvili and Piletskaya in the film “The Bride”
In the morning, Doronina packed her things and went to the station. In Volgograd, after painful thoughts, she had an abortion, after which she could no longer have children. And the woman surgeon said that she had twins - a boy and a girl.
Oleg Basilashvili in his youth
Doronina plunged into work on the provincial stage; she still had a family, but it was already a completely different family. After three years of service, they moved to Leningrad, where at first they lived with Doronina’s parents. First, they entered the Lenin Komsomol Theater together, and then began working for Georgy Tovstonogov at the Bolshoi Drama Theater.
The development of the actor took place under the mentorship of Georgy Tovstonogov
In 1963, “a simple girl from a working-class family,” as Basilashvili described her, filed for divorce. Talented and in demand in the theater, she no longer saw the point of continuing to live with her husband under the same roof. Their marriage lasted eight years, during which time Oleg managed to star in one more film (“Hot Soul” in 1959), but things didn’t go well for him in the theater for a long time. Years later, Basilashvili would say about the director and artistic director: The actor played some pale small roles and was about to leave the theater. But the director, as if sensing his mood, asked him not to do this, saying just one phrase: “I really need you.” After this, Basilashvili seemed to have a second wind. And the rehearsals began to take place differently, he found such depths in the roles with the help of Tovstonogov, which he had never imagined before. Rare fragments from Basilashvili’s performances and rehearsals at the Bolshoi Drama Theater Soon the viewer saw the actor’s wonderful theatrical works, including Khlestakov in “The Inspector General” (a play about fear, as Basilashvili calls it), Serpukhovsky in “The Story of a Horse,” Basov in “Summer Residents.” While rehearsing Voinitsky from “Uncle Vanya,” the actor was amazed at the director’s vision of each character, and critics called this his work the best of that period. The actor himself considers his best work of that time to be the image of a common man in Vasily Shukshin’s play “Energetic People.”
Oleg Basilashvili in the television play “Uncle Vanya” (1986)
Personal life
Ksenia Basilashvili's husband Mikhail Slobodinsky is eating with her. He works as an advisor to the chairman of the board of RUSNANO. In 2009, the fog had a daughter, Marinika. The girl is called a genius; she can memorize large volumes of texts without worry. This talent was passed on to her through her grandfather, who calmly memorized long texts of plays. The old girls told me that at one of the dinners they organized, where guests from Japan were invited, Marinika said a few phrases in Japanese after the conversations of the adults.
On September 22, 2013, Ksenia and her husband had a son. The baby's weight was 3305, and his height was 50 cm. The mother wrote about the addition to the family on her Facebook.
In the article I talked about the biography and personal life of Ksenia Basilashvili. We hope that you have learned something interesting about this wonderful woman and will follow her further career growth.
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Maturity, film career
Simultaneously with the rise of creative potential in the theater, the actor had his first significant roles in cinema. Arnold Lakhnovsky from the multi-part “Eternal Call” (directed by Vladimir Krasnopolsky and Valery Uskov), performed by Basilashvili, was supposed to be an exclusively negative character. But the actor fundamentally disagreed with such a one-sided interpretation of the image of a white officer and softened some, especially false, in his opinion, episodes.
Still from the film “Eternal Call”
Next, he starred with Nikita Mikhalkov in “Slave of Love” together with Elena Soloveya, Rodion Nakhapetov, Alexander Kalyagin and with Vladimir Basov in “Days of the Turbins” with Andrei Myagkov, Vasily Lanov, Andrei Rostotsky.
“Days of the Turbins” (Thalberg)
But Basilashvili became truly famous throughout the Soviet Union after the role of Samokhvalov in Eldar Ryazanov’s film “Office Romance.” Thousands of angry letters flew to the artist from all over the country, because he played the scoundrel so authentically!
“Office Romance”: Oleg Basilashvili as Samokhvalov
Who knows what the film “The Irony of Fate or Enjoy Your Bath” would have been like if Oleg Valeryanovich had starred in it? Costumes were made for him and several episodes were performed. But at this time his father died, and the troupe of the BDT theater said goodbye to the untimely departure of Efim Kopelyan. The artist refused the role, the viewer was left with only his photograph, which was thrown out of the window by Andrei Myagkov’s hero.
A photo of the actor can be seen in “The Irony of Fate”
The most memorable filming for the actor was Georgy Danelia’s “Autumn Marathon.” Together with Evgeny Leonov, Natalya Gundareva, Galina Volchek, Marina Neelova, a film stunning in drama, humor and irony was created.
“Autumn Marathon”: Oleg Basilashvili and Natalya Gundareva
Basilashvili in his autobiographical book “Is it really me?! Lord…” this is how he describes his character and the significance of the role: Then there were more film roles, which each time amazed with the novelty and originality inherent only in Basilashvili. For example, in order to play the role of a detective for the filming of Semyon Aranovich in “Confrontation,” the actor got a job as an intern in the criminal investigation department and for two years participated in the development of versions and supervised interrogations.
Still from the film “Confrontation”
For Eldar Ryazanov, this is “a man of the kindest soul”, Count Merzlyaev (“Say a word for the poor hussar”), the innocently convicted musician Platon Ryabinin (“Station for Two”), who was innocently convicted and found his love, and the absurd homeless man Fyodor Stepanovich, who decided to get married for the seventh time (“ Promised Heaven"), writer Oleg Goryunov ("Prediction").
“Station for two”: Oleg Basilashvili and Lyudmila Gurchenko
For Karen Shakhnazarov, Basilashvili is Katya’s father (“Courier”), writer (“City Zero”), Count Prizorov (“Dreams”), Prokhorov (“Poisons, or the World History of Poisoning”).
Still from the film "Courier"
Vladimir Bortko's actor is General Epanchin ("The Idiot"), Woland ("The Master and Margarita"). As for the role of Woland, brilliantly embodied by the artist on the screen, he himself interprets it as follows: After Woland, Basilashvili starred in several sensational TV series - “Liquidation” by Sergei Ursulyak, “Mareve” by Konstantin Khudyakov, “Palm Sunday” by Anton Sivers, “Sonka - the Golden Hand” " and "Farmer" by Viktor Merezhko.
Oleg Basilashvili as Woland (“The Master and Margarita”)
Admirers of Basilashvili’s talent and his George in the comedy melodrama by Karen Oganesyan, Rezo Gigineishvili, Roman Prygunov “Without Borders”, where the actor starred together with the brilliant Inna Churikova, will remember. Oleg Basilashvili. Life line
Personal life of Oleg Basilashvili
Oleg Valerianovich met his second wife, journalist Galina Mshanskaya, in 1961 in Leningrad. The TV play “Kyukhlya” was filmed on television, where Basilashvili played. Galina selected musical accompaniment for it. Both had experience of failed families; for a long time they only looked closely at each other. Shy Oleg did not dare to approach the woman he liked, until one day his friend Sergei Yursky joked that he had “chances.”
Galina Mshanskaya in her youth
The actor began to visit the control room and began to accompany Galina home. Love seemed to inspire him, and when his father arrived from Moscow, he declared, looking at the TV screen where Mshanskaya appeared, that he was going to marry this particular girl and would now bring her to introduce her to his father. He actually came to television and stopped only because his beloved was working live. At that time, Basilashvili was not yet very popular in both theater and cinema, and for a long time he doubted that such a brilliant young woman could choose him. But the wedding took place.
Oleg Basilashvili and his wife have been happily married for more than half a century
The couple have lived together in love and respect for more than fifty years. Galina Evgenievna is the chief editor of the St. Petersburg branch of the All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company. Their eldest daughter Olga graduated from the economics department of the theater institute and works in television. The youngest, Ksenia, became a journalist and works at the Ekho Moskvy radio station. To the great joy of Oleg Valerianovich, the eldest daughter gave him a granddaughter, Marinika (born in 2009), and the youngest daughter, a grandson, Timofey (born in 2013).
Oleg Basilashvili with his family
Family
In the biography of Oleg Basilashvili, personal life has always played an important role. As we already wrote, his first wife was classmate Tatyana Doronina. They got married when they were in their third year at the Moscow Art Theater School. They lived together for eight years, after which they lost interest in each other and divorced. By that time, great changes had occurred in the biography and personal life of Oleg Valerianovich Basilashvili. Former spouses like to remember that they separated without mutual complaints.
The next wife of the hero of our article was journalist Galina Mshanskaya. At first they lived in a civil marriage for two years, only then they got married. The biography, personal life, and family of Oleg Basilashvili have always been of interest to his many fans. This marriage turned out to be happier. The biography of Oleg Valerianovich Basilashvili and the actor’s personal life have been a role model ever since.
In 2011 they celebrated their golden wedding. By this time, they had two daughters, Ksenia and Olga, and their granddaughter Marinika, who by that time was two years old, also came to the anniversary. In 2013, Basilashvili’s grandson Timofey was born. These are the features of the biography and personal life of Oleg Basilashvili.
Oleg Basilashvili now
The actor, a “St. Petersburg Muscovite,” lives in an apartment on Borodinskaya Street and still works at the Bolshoi Drama Theater, participating in the plays “Uncle’s Dream,” “One Summer” and “Executioners.” The premiere of the latter took place on Oleg Valerianovich’s 85th birthday and was created specifically for this date.
Photo from the play “Executioners”
In 2020, the dramatic series “We Didn’t Expect” was released, where Basilashvili, as always, brilliantly played the role of the main character, the elderly musician Kesha. A local official wants to take away the old man’s mansion, for which purpose he deceives Innocent into a mental hospital.
Oleg Basilashvili in the series “We Didn’t Expect”
The People’s Artist of the USSR himself, a popularly beloved actor, summing up the interim results, speaks about his life and creative career:
