Oleg Yankovsky - Life

Life

Born into a noble family of Polish stock, son of Life-Guards Semenovsky regiment's Stabskapitän, Oleg Yankovsky formed an ambition to emulate his brother Rostislav and joined the Saratov Drama Theatre in 1965. His film career was launched two years later, when he was cast in two movies about World War II, namely The Shield and the Sword (Shchit i mech) (1968) by director Vladimir Basov and Two Comrades Were Serving (Sluzhili dva tovarishcha) (1968) by Yevgeni Karelov.

During his remarkably prolific screen career, Yankovsky appeared in many film adaptations of Russian classics, notably My Sweet and Tender Beast (1977) and The Kreutzer Sonata (1987). A leading actor of Mark Zakharov's Lenkom Theatre since 1975, he starred in the TV versions of the theatre's productions, An Ordinary Miracle (1978) and The Very Same Munchhausen (1979) being the most notable. For his role in Roman Balayan's Flights in Dreams and Reality (1984) Yankovsky was awarded the USSR State Prize. He has been better known abroad for his parts in Tarkovsky's movies The Mirror (as the father) and Nostalghia (in the main role).

In the early 1990s Oleg Yankovsky also played quite different roles in Georgi Daneliya’s tragic comedy The Passport (1990) and in Karen Shakhnazarov’s historical and psychological drama The Assassin of the Tsar (Tsareubiytsa) (1991).

Starting in 1993, Yankovsky ran the Kinotavr Film Festival in Sochi. He continued to receive awards for his work with several Nika Awards from the Russian Film Academy for his directorial debut Come Look At Me (2001) and Valery Todorovsky's Lyubovnik (2002). He appeared as Count Pahlen in Poor, Poor Pavel (2004) and as Komarovsky in a TV adaptation of Doctor Zhivago (2006), directed by Oleg Menshikov.

The last film Yankovsky appeared in was Tsar, which was released in 2009 and demonstrated at the Cannes Film Festival on the 17th of May 2009, just three days before his death. Yankovsky played the sophisticated role of Metropolitan Philipp in his last film.