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.

British critics praised the film. Peter Brook called it "of special interest" and noted its "gigantic merit". Dilys Powell described Smoktunovsky's acting as "of extraordinary intelligence – a Hamlet who is not merely melancholy but actively dangerous, a man who could kill with a word". Tom Milne wrote "Innokenti Smoktunovsky is a forceful, sane, sensitive Hamlet trapped in a prison of political intrigue". Penelope Gilliatt, a future scriptwriter of "Sunday Bloody Sunday" observed on 18 April 1965: "Kozintsev's film is the most exciting Shakespeare on screen since Olivier... A Hamlet of rare sensitivity and power".

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