Yevgeny Mironov (actor) - Career

Career

In 1982, Mironov left his school in Tatischevo-5 to enter the Saratov Slonov Theater School, one of the few such establishments that accepted 14-year-olds, which he graduated in 1986. Offered a job with the Saratov Children’s Theater, he chose instead to continue to study acting at the prestigious Moscow Art Theater School-Studio under his famous Saratov compatriot, actor and director Oleg Tabakov. In Moscow Mironov succeeded in getting an interview with Tabakov, but the acting class was already in its second year. Tabakov gave Mironov a probation period, after the successful completion of which he was accepted to the School-Studio as a sophomore. After graduating in 1990, he became, and remains, a resident actor at the Oleg Tabakov Theater. In that capacity he has played a variety of notable parts, including the title role in the hit "The Passions of Bumbarash" (directed by Vladimir Mashkov), which opened in 1993 and is still playing to full houses.

Mironov's film career began in 1988 with the Aleksandr Kaidanovsky film The Kerosene Salesman's Wife. After appearing in a few low-budget films, Mironov gained national recognition and critical acclaim for his lead performance in Valery Todorovsky’s beloved coming-of-age drama, Love (1991), for which he received several national and international film awards and was voted Best Actor of 1992 by Russian film critics. His next success was in Pyotr Todorovsky’s comedy-drama Encore Again!, which solidified Mironov's popularity. He went on to play leads in Denis Yevstigneyev's Limita and Mama, and to receive a Best Supporting Actor award at the 1995 Sozvezdie International Film Festival for a special appearance in Nikita Mikhalkovs Oscar-winning Burnt by the Sun. In 1994 he delivered a sterling performance in Vladimir Khotinenko’s controversial drama The Moslem, then considered his best work to date. Also notable among his early film efforts is the character of Khlestakov in Sergei Gazarov’s screen adaptation of Gogol's The Inspector General.

Mironov's characters include sinister mama’s boy in Nikolai Lebedev’s Snake Spring, a lovelorn sponger in His Wife's Diary and a naive Soviet cook in Dreaming of Space (both directed by Alexei Uchitel), the deceptively simple intelligence officer in Mikhail Ptashuk's August of 44, the man-turned-bug in Valery Fokin's adaptation of Kafka’s "The Metamorphosis", a war-deranged soldier in Andrei Konchalovsky's House of Fools, an arrogant surgeon in Yegor Konchalovsky’s "Escape", a talented loser in Konstantin Khudyakov’s "On Upper Maslovka", and a millionaire psycho killer in Andrei Kavun’s The Hunt for Piranha. 2003 saw Mironov's portrayal of Prince Myshkin in Vladimir Bortko’s historymaking TV adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot, followed by leads in two other acclaimed TV productions – as the young Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in an adaptation of his autobiographical "The First Circle" by Gleb Panfilov (2006), and as twin brothers in Yuri Moroz’s action-adventure miniseries "The Apostle".

By the mid-1990s, Mironov also starred in international stage projects as German director Peter Stein’s The Oresteia and Hamlet, Declan Donnellan’s Boris Godunov, Valery Fokin’s The Last Night of the Last Czar and The Karamazovs and Hell (for which he was awarded the State Prize of the Russian Federation). In 2003 he appeared as Lopakhin in Eimuntas Nekrošius’ production of The Cherry Orchard. Mironov actively collaborates with the Moscow Art Theater, where he has appeared as Treplev (The Seagull, 2001-2006), George Pigden (No. 13/Out of Order, 2001), and Porfiry Golovlyov (The Golovlyovs, 2005). In 2006 he founded the Mironov Theater Company and produced Figaro. The Events of One Day, directed by the controversial Kirill Serebrennikov with Mironov as the lead. On December 18, 2006, Mironov became Artistic Director of Moscow's State Theater of Nations.