Mikhail Kuznetsov

Mikhail Artemyevich Kuznetsov (; 25 February 1918 – 23 August 1986) was a Soviet film and theater actor. He was an Honored Artist of the Ukrainian SSR, People's Artist of the RSFSR (1964), and the winner of the Stalin Prize of the first degree (1952).

He was born into a proletariat family. After the death of his father, he and his mother moved to the village of Tikhoretskaya. He first received small roles, working his way up to the role of Truffaldino. At some point, he and his mother moved to Moscow, and he completed his education in a professional technical school. He desired to study acting, but was not allowed to abandon work to try out for theater, so he burnt his hand with acid in order to be allowed to leave. He began to study at the Stanislavsky Opera and Drama Studio under Konstantin Stanislavsky in 1937. He was also talented at singing – opera singer Antonina Nezhdanova described him as having a "pleasant baritone". After his role as Alexey Solovyov in Yuli Raizman's Mashenka, Kuznetsov began to be noticed by other directors. After being evacuated to Alma-Ata in the first years of World War II, Kuznetsov performed roles in several films, including Ivan Pyryev and Iosif Kheifits, the latter of which he would name "one of his directors", alongside Raizman. He was invited to play the role of Fyodor Basmanov in Sergei Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible, which became possibly the most well-known role of his career.

His cousin was Anatoly Kuznetsov.

Selected filmography

1940: The Friends as Ilya Korzun 1942: Mashenka as Solovyov 1943: Actress as Soldier on the concert (uncredited) 1943: The Aerial Cabman as Kolya 1945: Ivan the Terrible as Fyodor Basmanov 1945: It Happened in the Donbass as underground worker 1947: In the Name of Life as Doctor Aleksandr Kolesov 1948: Private Aleksandr Matrosov as Captain Kolosov 1951: Bountiful Summer as Pyotr Sereda 1951: Taras Shevchenko as soldier Skobelev 1953: Adventure in Odessa as Andrey Andreyevich Belov, uchitel geografii 1954: Marina's Destiny as Tarass Vassilievich 1954: Commander of the Ship as Captain Andrei Vysotin 1955: More studyonoye as Crewman Fedor Verigin 1955: Sailor Chizhik as Fedos Chyzhyk 1958: Ivan the Terrible, Part II as Fyodor Basmanov 1958: E.A. — Extraordinary Accident as Anton Semenovich Kovalenko 1959: The Magic Weaver as Old soldier 1964: The Blue Notebook as Vladimir Lenin 1965: The Salvos of the Aurora Cruiser as Lenin 1965: The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin as Hlynov 1972: We and Our Mountains as Pavle (voice) 1978: Guarneri Quartet as Pyotr Grigoryevich Laktionov 1985: Bagration as Mikhail Kutuzov 1985: The Hobbit as Fili