Innokenty Smoktunovsky

Infobox actor
name = Innokenty Smoktunovsky

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caption = Smoktunovsky as Hamlet in the 1964 movie.
birthname = Innokenty Mikhailovich Smoktunovsky
birthdate = birth date|1925|03|28
birthplace = Tatyanovka, Tomsk Oblast, RSFSR
deathdate = Death date and age|1994|08|03|1925|03|28
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occupation = actor
yearsactive = 1956 — 1994
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Innokentiy Mikhailovich Smoktunovsky ( _ru. Инноке́нтий Миха́йлович Смоктуно́вский, b. March 28, 1925, d. August 3, 1994) was a Russian actor acclaimed as the "king of Soviet actors". He was named People's Artist of the USSR in 1974 and the Hero of Socialist Labour in 1990.

Smoktunovsky (birth name Smoktunovich) was born in a Siberian village and served in the Red Army during World War II. In 1946, he joined a theatre in Krasnoyarsk, later moving to Moscow. In 1957, he was invited by Georgi Tovstonogov to join the Bolshoi Drama Theatre of Leningrad, where he stunned the public with his dramatic interpretation of Prince Myshkin in Dostoyevsky's "The Idiot". His career in film was launched by Mikhail Romm's movie "Nine Days of One Year" (1962). In 1964, he was cast in the role of Hamlet in the celebrated Grigori Kozintsev's screen version of Shakespeare's play, which won him a praise from Laurence Olivier and the Lenin Prize. Many English critics even ranked the "Hamlet" of Smoktunovsky above the one played by Laurence Olivier. Smoktunovsky’s Hamlet, just like Prince Myshkin, also became a whole epoch. The actor 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 mock detective "Beware of the Car" (1966), which unfolded the actor’s outstanding comic gift. Later, he played Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky in "Tchaikovsky" (1969), Uncle Vanya in Andrei Konchalovsky's screen version of Chekhov's play (1970), the Narrator in Andrei Tarkovsky's "The Mirror" (1975), an old man in Anatoly Efros's "On Thursday and Never Again" (1977), and Salieri in Mikhail Schwejzer's "Little Tragedies" (1980) based on Alexander Pushkin's plays.

One of the minor planets, Planet 4926 has been registered under the name of Smoktunovsky in the worldwide catalogue of planets.

Filmography

* 1956 Soldiers
* 1957 Storm
* 1959 Neotpravlennoe pismo
* 1961 Nine days of one year
* 1964 Hamlet
* 1966 Beware of the car
* 1969 Tchaikovsky
* 1969 Crime and punishment
* 1970 Uncle Vanya
* 1972 "Taming of the fire" "( _ru. Укрощение огня)"
* 1973 Moscow-Cassiopeia
* 1974 Otroki vo vselennoy
* 1975 Trust "( _ru. Доверие)"
* 1975 They fought for their Motherland
* 1979 Moscow Does not Believe in Tears
* 1979 Little tragedies
* 1983 Two under one umbrella
* 1985 Russia at the beginning
* 1986 as "Prime Minister Lord Thomas Bellinger"
* 1987 Dark Eyes
* 1991 Genius
* 1993 Gold
* 1993 I wanna go to America
* 1994 Enchanted
* 1997 Dandelion Wine

External links

*
* [http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=66625&mod=bio Smoktunovsky's biography in "The New York Times".]
* [http://www.russia-ic.com/culture_art/theatre/581/ Biography of Innokenti Smoktunovsky]