Smoktunovsky I.M. (1925-1994), actor

Categories / Art/Music, Theatre/Personalia
Categories / Art/Cinema
SMOKTUNOVSKY (born Smoktunovich) Innokenty Mikhailovich (1925-1994), actor; People's Artist of the USSR in 1974 and Hero of Socialist Labour in 1990. He participated in World War II. He studied and played at a studio of the Krasnoyarsk Pushkin Drama Theatre in 1945-46. He appeared on stage in Norilsk, Makhachkala, and Stalingrad in 1947-51 and worked at the Film Actor Studio Theatre in Moscow in 1955-57 and the Bolshoy Drama Theatre in Leningrad in 1957-60 and 1965-66. He became renowned as Prince Myshkin in F. M. Dostoevsky's Idiot in 1957 and 1966, which opened G. A. Tovstonogov's classic cycle in the Bolshoy Drama Theatre. An actor with extremely delicate and sensitive nerves, Smoktunovsky was among the most profound and uncommon interpreters of classic images and the first "intellectual actor" on the Soviet stage and screen. While working at the Bolshoy Drama Theatre, he also performed the parts of Dzerzhinsky in N. F. Pogodin's Kremlin Chimes and Sergey in A. N. Arbuzov's Story of Irkutsk. Among his other renowned roles were Tsar Fedor Ioannovich in A. K. Tolstoy's play of the same name and Ivanov and Voynitsky in A. P. Chekhov's Ivanov and Uncle Vanya. The theme of St. Petersburg appeared in his performances of Pushkin's works mainly on radio and television. An outstanding actor, Smoktunovsky acted in many films at Lenfilm and other film studios. Among his roles were Hamlet in the film of the same name in 1964, Ilya Kulikov in Nine Days of One Year in 1962, Detochkin in Beware of the Car in 1966, Porfiry Petrovich in Crime and Punishment in 1969, and Salieri and Baron in Little Tragedies in 1980. He played about 100 roles in all in cinema and on television. He worked at Moscow's Maly Theatre in 1972-75 and Moscow Art Theatre from 1975 renamed as Chekhov Moscow Art Theatre in 1989. His reminiscences, Time of Good Hopes and To Be!, were published in Moscow in 1979 and 1999, respectively. He was awarded the Lenin Prize in 1965, the State Prize of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 1971, and Nika in 1990 and 1993.

References: Горфункель Е. И. Смоктуновский. М., 1990.

A. A. Kirillov. Arbuzov Alexsey Nikolaevich
Chekhov Anton Pavlovich
Dostoevsky Fedor Mikhailovich
Lenin (real name Ulyanov) Vladimir Ilyich
Pogodin (real name Stukalov) Nikolay Fedorovich
Pushkin Alexander Sergeevich
Smoktunovsky (real name Smoktunovich) Innokenty Mikhailovich
Tolstoy Alexey Konstantinovich, Count
Tovstonogov Georgy Alexandrovich
Горфункель Е. И. Смоктуновский. М., 1990 Tovstonogov Bolshoy Drama Theatre
Lenfilm, Film Studio