Vera Kuzminichna was born in the village of Sukhoi Ruchey in the Tver region. However, soon the mother of the family, who had certain ambitions for her own life, found a way to take the family to the capital.
And the family was large: her older sisters were raised side by side with Vera, and 13 years after the birth of the future actress, a younger brother was born.
The boy was two years old when the war began. He and his mother were immediately evacuated. The older sisters, one of whom had graduated from medical school by that time, and the other worked in the Ministry of Defense, went on business trips.
Only Vera, as a teenager, remained with her father in Moscow. Along with everyone else, she carried boxes of sand to extinguish incendiary bombs, was on duty on the roof and... even then she dreamed of a stage.
As a little girl she ended up at the Bolshoi Theater. My mother's friend took her to the performance. There Vera saw not only a performance, but also people from a different social class who lived a different life from Vera’s. The Vasiliev family, having moved to the capital, lived in a communal apartment, their parents worked at a factory.
The family did not immediately notice that the youngest daughter was interested in theater. The parents barely had time to rest between work shifts, and the older sisters, due to the age difference, were not immersed in Vera’s life.
She tried to save money for the performance, bought theater magazines and was soon able to interest her best friend in the theater. They cooperated and earned pennies for their hobby together. Once the girls even sold one set of textbooks, leaving the second one so that the two of them could study from it - they so wanted to go to the theater!
Filmography
Her career as a film actress started in 1945, when Vera first appeared on screen in the feature film “Twins.” But this was only a cameo role, and the main role followed only two years later in the feature film “The Tale of the Siberian Land” (1947). This work became triumphant in her career and was awarded two Stalin Prizes. After the premiere, the young artist woke up famous and in demand in Soviet cinema.
Among the most recognizable are the following works: the comedies “Carnival”, “The Married Bachelor” and “The Adventures of a Dentist”, the dramatic film “Minors”, and the classic of Soviet cinema “Dowry Wedding”. In total, Vasilyeva played about 50 roles in films and 40 in the theater. The artist loved theatrical life more and experienced every story as if it were real life.
Debut
Come to Baikal (1965)
The actress recalls how Pyryev looked at her unkindly, and when the assistants arrived, he began to scold them. They were embarrassed: “Yesterday she didn’t look like that.”
The experienced director understood what was going on and sent Vasilyeva and her assistants to wash their faces, comb their curls and braid their hair. Having looked at the resulting girl, he softened. I asked for two stockings. “What’s wrong with my legs?!” - thought the young and completely confused actress.
But Ivan Alexandrovich ordered the stockings to be rolled up and stuffed into the neckline. They say she has the right face, fat, but she herself is skinny, a mess! With a new “breast”, tying her wide dress high, as the actress herself accurately noted, “to look like a woman on a teapot,” she passed the audition and was approved for the role.
On camera she had to play with the masters, whom the student was afraid of. Until the end of filming, Vera kept to herself and did not at all expect that the movie would become popular, and that she, a very young actress, would be awarded the Stalin Prize for her role as Nastya.
Actress Vera Vasilyeva: personal life
First love is director Boris Ravenskikh, only husband is Vladimir Ushakov. The actress never gave birth to children in her entire life. They say that she didn’t love her husband, however, she lived a family life with him for 56 years.
Today Vasilyeva often remembers her late husband, but only from the good side. A woman is grateful to God for meeting a real man.
Boris Ravenskikh and Vera Vasilyeva
In her youth, she fell in love with a young but married director. After graduating from theater school, the young artist joined the Satire Theater, where she met Boris Ravenskikh.
A spark of passion broke out between the young people, and an office romance began that lasted 2 years. The entire theater troupe knew about this affair, and perhaps the director’s wife also knew about it.
Naive Vera believed that one day Boris would leave his wife, but he simply went crazy with his new passion. It all ended when the director was lured to another theater. The popular wisdom worked: “Out of sight, out of mind.” But Vera spent a long time collecting the pieces of her broken heart.
Vladimir Ushakov - Vasilyeva’s husband
Vera met her future husband, Vladimir Ushakov, on the set of the film adaptation of “Dowry Wedding.” She still missed her beloved man, and the actor had just returned from Germany and was blinded by her femininity and beauty. Vladimir courted him beautifully for three years, but Vasilyeva refused to marry him. In the fourth year I gave up, the newlyweds secretly married and lived in a hostel.
Vasilyeva refused to sleep with Ushakov, and he patiently set up two beds. She wasn't going to cook, so he hired an au pair. Everyone laughed at him, but he believed that one day he would conquer this impregnable fortress. Several years passed before she finally realized that he truly loved her and would never leave her.
They lived legally married for 56 years. We always vacationed together, never separated. In the summer of 2011, while on vacation in a sanatorium, Ushakov’s heart stopped, the actress became a widow.
Director
Dowry Wedding (1953)
Having brilliantly graduated from the Moscow Theater School and already having a prestigious award, the artist was invited to the Satire Theater, where the actress serves to this day. She managed to become a prima singer in the first two years of work, and in the 50s, when Vasilyeva’s fame thundered throughout the USSR, a young and talented director, Boris Ravenskikh, came to the theater.
Charming and handsome, the man charmed the entire troupe with his seething energy and breathed new life into the theater. The Dowry Wedding staged by him was performed more than nine hundred times. For this performance, Vera received her second Stalin Prize, the theater received a new wave of recognition, and the director received a beautiful and devoted woman.
The actress never hid that she passionately fell in love with the married director. He also went crazy over the beautiful Vera. I even met her parents and was able to establish contact with them. They lived like that until the director was lured to another theater.
Not only did he not get a divorce because of Vasilyeva, but he also lost interest in his former beloved actress, barely stopping seeing her every day.
She was tossed about, but understood that professional changes in the life of her beloved, his coldness and, as a result, separation were liberation for her.
Does Vera Vasilyeva have children?
The actress has no children or grandchildren. Throughout her life, she never managed to experience the joy of motherhood. However, Vera has a named daughter, who will become the heir to her property after the death of the People's Artist.
Daria Miloslavskaya and Vasilyeva
Of Vera’s relatives, only her younger brother remains. But she is much closer to Daria Miloslavskaya, whom the woman considers her named daughter.
At 87 years old, she made a will, according to which an apartment in the center of Moscow worth 35 million after the death of the actress would go to Dasha. She confirmed publicly that she is of sound mind.
Cinema and theater
Vera Vasilyeva has about thirty film roles to her credit. Despite the fact that most of them are episodic, she has never had any unnoticeable images. The actress puts her soul into each of her roles, which is very noticeable on the screen.
Vera Vasilyeva gained the greatest popularity as a theater actress. On stage she embodied more than sixty images, each of which entered the annals of history. The role of Countess Almavira from “Crazy Day, or The Marriage of Figaro” is considered one of the best.
In 1999, the actress revealed herself to the audience from a different side. She took part in the project “Theater and Film Stars Sing,” where she demonstrated her amazing vocal abilities.
Despite her advanced age, Vera Vasilyeva never sits still. She not only continues to play in the theater, but is also a social activist.
Vera Kuzminichna Vasilyeva: health status
Even at the age of 90, she successfully appeared on the theater stage and participated in performances. In her interviews, the woman openly admits that she is fully realized in her chosen profession. Today she is 94 years old. She is the same active and cheerful grandmother who recites poetry by heart and instantly gets used to any role. Vasilyeva does not complain about feeling unwell, she always smiles and jokes.
She doesn’t really like society; she prefers peace and solitude. She has always been a loner and even in old age adheres to the already familiar principles of life.
Childhood and adolescence
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Publication from the Moscow Department of Culture (@kultura_mos) Sep 30, 2019 at 4:43 PDT
Vera Kuzminichna Vasilyeva is a Soviet theater and film actress, People's Artist of the USSR, winner of two Stalin Prizes. She is best known for her roles in the films “The Tale of the Siberian Land”, “Dowry Wedding”, “Screen Star”.
Vera Vasilyeva was born on September 30, 1925 in Moscow (but there is a version that she was born in Sukhoy Ruchey, Tver province, in her father’s homeland). The family of driver Kuzma Vasiliev had four children: three daughters, and before the war a son was born. The eldest daughters - Antonina and Valentina - studied, and all the dirty work went to little Vera. She carried flasks of kerosene, washed floors, peeled frozen potatoes every day and looked after her younger brother Vasya.
The family lived very poorly: their communal apartment was located in a two-story barracks, with rats running along the dark corridors.
“I really loved eating raw potatoes. It probably did me good, because my cheeks were red and strong, as if I lived like a lady,” the actress recalls her childhood.
As a child, Vera dreamed a lot and tried not to notice all the hardships of life that were all around her. She constantly read books under a kerosene lamp, trying to be carried away into a romantic world where kind people live and true love reigns.
“As a child, I read a lot of real literature, so I wanted to live in a different world: not in ours, but in the 19th century with the concepts of that time about love, honesty, nobility, pity for people - all that was preached in classical literature. Theater was an opportunity to live differently,” admits Vera Kuzminichna.
Indeed, it was the theater that helped Vera abstract from reality. Her love for the stage began when her mother’s friend took her to the Bolshoi Theater to see the play “The Tsar’s Bride.” After this, the girl began to be interested in theater and read more and more, expanding her knowledge.
Now it seems that such a cheerful woman was not touched by grief and sadness; in fact, Vera Kuzminichna had a very difficult fate: there were failures both in creativity and in her personal life, but first things first.
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Publication from Andrey Mironov (@_andrey_mironov__) Oct 5, 2020 at 6:23 PDT
The first disappointment came in her teenage years, when one fine day she stood in front of the mirror and realized that she was not at all like the heroines of the novels she read. There is no beauty, slimness, charm - everything that every girl needs so much in order to find happiness.
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Posted by Albert Gainullin (@777alic) Sep 29, 2020 at 9:49 am PDT
Then she thought that now her life would never change: she would still live in a communal apartment with rats, eat rotten potatoes and sauerkraut, and her husband would not be a kind and well-mannered man (like the heroes of the novels), but a rude working man.
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Publication from Ivan Sadovnikov. From Russia. (@ivan.sadovnikov) Sep 30, 2020 at 10:31 PDT
Desperate, young Vera decides to commit suicide so that everyone will mourn and feel sorry for her. She drank kerosene and slightly cut her veins - it became unbearably painful, and she decided that she would complete this matter someday later. Then she could not even imagine that her life would include luxurious outfits, that a famous director would love her, and that the audience would give her a standing ovation.
- Mark Zakharov died of pneumonia
Vasilyeva’s path to success was long and persistent. In 1943, she refused to be evacuated and stayed with her father in Moscow, because the entrance exams to the theater institute were just around the corner. Vera did not endure all the difficulties in vain, and here is her reward - her name is on the list of applicants. Three years later at the institute they approached her and offered to play in a movie. What a joy the student had when she heard the cherished words and realized that she was rapidly approaching the realization of her dream
Theater
In 1948, a graduate of the theater school came to work at the capital's Satire Theater. Vera made her debut in the leading role in the production of Lev Gurych Sinichkin. Two years later, the actress became a prima singer.
In the early 50s, Vera Vasilyeva played Olga in “Dowry Wedding.” The director predicted success for this performance, the forecast was correct - the play was performed 900 times. Vasilyeva received the second Stalin Prize for this role.
Vera Vasilyeva in the play “The Queen of Spades”
The artist’s creative biography has many characteristic roles. Vasilyeva played Anna Andreevna in The Inspector General, Domna Platonovna in The Warrior, Anna Pavlovna in Profitable Place - more than 60 roles in total.
Sometimes Vera was invited to perform in productions of other theaters. The actress's talent is confirmed by numerous awards and prizes. On September 25, 2010, Vasilyeva received the Order of Merit for the Fatherland, 3rd degree.
