Image: Wikimedia CommonsInnokenty Smoktunovsky
Soviet and Russian actor (1925-1994)
- Born March 28, 1925
- 3 movies
Innokenty Smoktunovsky (28 March 1925 to 3 August 1994) was a Soviet and Russian stage and film actor whose Hamlet, in Grigori Kozintsev's 1964 film, won him the Lenin Prize. A Red Army veteran of Kursk and the Dnieper, he began acting in Krasnoyarsk in 1946 and made his name in Leningrad as Prince Myshkin in Georgy Tovstonogov's staging of The Idiot. On screen he moved between Shakespeare, Chekhov and comedy with equal ease. He was named People's Artist of the USSR in 1974 and Hero of Socialist Labour in 1990.
Innokenty Smoktunovsky appears in 3 films in The Rerun, from 1966 to 1980. Most of that work is in comedy, drama and romance.
Known for
- Beware of the Car (1966). Smoktunovsky was part of the cast of this 1966 Soviet feature.
- Mirror (1975). Smoktunovsky was part of the cast of this 1975 Soviet feature.
- Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears (1980). Smoktunovsky was part of the cast of this 1980 Soviet feature.
Career
Smoktunovsky reached the screen late, after war service and a decade in provincial and Moscow theatre. Tovstonogov’s 1957 invitation to the Bolshoi Drama Theatre in Leningrad, and the Myshkin that followed, made his reputation, and cinema caught up quickly: the physicist Ilya Kulikov in Mikhail Romm’s Nine Days in One Year (1962), then Hamlet (1964).
Eldar Ryazanov’s Beware of the Car (1966) cast him as Yuri Detochkin, an insurance agent who steals cars from crooked owners and gives the proceeds away. He played the composer in Tchaikovsky (1969) and Voinitsky in Andrei Konchalovsky’s Uncle Vanya (1970), voiced the narrator of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mirror (1975) and appeared as himself in Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears. His title role in Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich at the Maly Theatre (1973) is often counted among his best stage work, and he won the Nika Award for Best Actor in 1990.
Where to start
- Hamlet (1964): the Lenin Prize performance, and the role most closely tied to his name.
- Beware of the Car (1966): a sly Soviet comedy that shows how light his touch could be.
- Mirror (1975): his voice carries Tarkovsky’s memory piece, an unusual way to meet an actor.
Movies
Quick answers
- What movies and TV shows has Innokenty Smoktunovsky been in?
- Innokenty Smoktunovsky appears in Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears (1980), Mirror (1975) and Beware of the Car (1966) on The Remote.
- When was Innokenty Smoktunovsky born?
- Innokenty Smoktunovsky was born on 28 March 1925.
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