Innokenty Smoktunovsky

Innokenty Smoktunovsky
Innokenty Mikhailovich Smoktunovsky (born Smoktunovich, 28 March 19253 August 1994) was a Soviet and Russian stage and film actor. He was named a People's Artist of the USSR in 1974 and a Hero of Socialist Labour in 1990.
Early life
Smoktunovsky was born in a Siberian village in a peasant family of Belarusian ethnicity. It was once rumored that he came from a Polish family, even nobility, but the actor himself denied these theories by stating his family was Belarusian and not of nobility. He served in the Red Army during World War II and fought in the battles of Kursk, the Dnieper and Kiev. In 1946, he joined a theatre in Krasnoyarsk, later moving to Moscow. In 1957, he was invited by Georgy Tovstonogov to join the Bolshoi Drama Theatre of Leningrad, where he stunned the public with his dramatic interpretation of Prince Myshkin in Dostoevsky's The Idiot. One of his best roles was the title role in Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy's Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich (Maly Theatre, 1973).
Film career
His career in film was launched by Mikhail Romm's film Nine Days in One Year (1962). In 1964, he was cast in the role of Prince Hamlet in Grigori Kozintsev's celebrated screen version of Shakespeare's play, which won him praise from Laurence Olivier as well as the Lenin Prize. Many English critics even ranked the Hamlet of Smoktunovsky above the one played by Olivier, at a time when Olivier's was still considered definitive. Smoktunovsky created an integral heroic portrait, which blended together what seemed incompatible before: manly simplicity and exquisite aristocratism, kindness and caustic sarcasm, a derisive mindset and self-sacrifice.
Smoktunovsky became known to wider audiences as Yuri Detochkin in Eldar Ryazanov's detective satire Beware of the Car (1966), which revealed the actor's outstanding comic gifts. Later, he played Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in Tchaikovsky (1969), Uncle Vanya in Andrei Konchalovsky's screen version of Chekhov's play (1970), the Narrator in Andrei Tarkovsky's Mirror (1975), an old man in Anatoly Efros's On Thursday and Never Again (1977), and Salieri in Mikhail Schweitzer's Little Tragedies (1979) based on Alexander Pushkin's plays.
In 1990, Smoktunovsky won the Nika Award in the category Best Actor. He died on 3 August 1994, at a sanatorium, aged 69. The minor planet 4926 Smoktunovskij was named after him.
Filmography
Murder on Dante Street (1956) as Young fascist
Soldiers (1956) as Lieutenant Farber
Close to Us (1958) as Andrei
Letter Never Sent (1960) as Konstantin Sabinin
Until Next Spring (1960) as Aleksei Ruchyev
After the Wedding (1962) as Narrator's voice
Nine Days in One Year (1962) as Ilya Kulikov
Mozart and Salieri (1962) as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Hamlet (1964) as Prince Hamlet
On the Same Planet (1965) as Vladimir Lenin
Beware of the Car (1966) as Yuri Detochkin
Degree of Risk (1968) as Aleksandr Kirillov
The Living Corpse (1968) as Ivan Petrovich
Crime and Punishment (1969) as Porfiry Petrovich
Tchaikovsky (1970) as Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Uncle Vanya (1970) as Ivan "Uncle Vanya" Voinitsky
Ilf and Petrov Rode a Tram (1972) as Tram passenger
Taming of the Fire (1972) as Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
Moscow-Cassiopeia (1973) as I.O.O.
The Heron and the Crane (1974) as Narrator's voice
Daughters-Mothers (1974) as Vadim Antonovich Vasilyev
A Lover's Romance (1974) as Trumpeter
Teens in the Universe (1974) as I.O.O.
Take Aim (1974) as Franklin D. Roosevelt
Mirror (1975) as adult Aleksei's voice
The Captivating Star of Happiness (1975) as Ivan Bogdanovich Zeidler
They Fought for Their Country (1975) as Surgeon
Twenty Days Without War (1976) as Vyacheslav's voice (played by Nikolai Grinko)
Trust (1976) as Nikolay Bobrikov
The Princess on a Pea (1977) as King
The Steppe (1977) as Moisei Moiseyevich
On Thursday and Never Again (1977) as Ivan Modestovich
The Barrier (1979) as Antony Manev
Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears (1979) as himself (cameo appearance)
Little Tragedies (1979) as Antonio Salieri and Old Baron
The Queen of Spades (1982) as Chekalinsky
Dead Souls (1984) as Plyushkin
Primary Russia (1985) as Emperor Justinian I
The Last Road (1986) as Jacob van Heeckeren tot Enghuizen
The Twentieth Century Approaches (1986) as Lord Thomas Bellinger
Dark Eyes (1987) as Modest Petrovich
Gardes-Marines, Ahead! (1987) as André-Hercule de Fleury
First Encounter - Last Encounter (1987) as Counterintelligence colonel
Mother (1989) as Governor
Trap for a Lonely Man (1990) as Merluche
Genius (1991) as Mafia leader Gilya
Dandelion Wine (1997) as Colonel Freeley (voiced by Sergey Bezrukov; released posthumously)
References
External links
Smoktunovsky's biography in The New York Times
Biography of Innokenty Smoktunovsky
1925 births
1994 deaths
20th-century Russian male actors
Audiobook narrators
Burials at Novodevichy Cemetery
Heroes of Socialist Labour
Honored Artists of the RSFSR
Male Shakespearean actors
People from Tomsk Governorate
People's Artists of the RSFSR
People's Artists of the USSR
Recipients of the Lenin Prize
Recipients of the Medal "For Courage" (Russia)
Recipients of the Nika Award
Recipients of the Order of Friendship of Peoples
Recipients of the Order of Lenin
Recipients of the Vasilyev Brothers State Prize of the RSFSR
Russian male film actors
Russian male stage actors
Russian male television actors
Russian male voice actors
Russian people of Belarusian descent
Soviet male film actors
Soviet male stage actors
Soviet male television actors
Soviet male voice actors
Soviet military personnel of World War II
Soviet partisans
Soviet people of Belarusian descent
Spoken word artists