Leonid Filatov

Leonid Alekseyevich Filatov (; 24 December 1946 – 26 October 2003) was a Soviet and Russian actor, director, poet, pamphleteer, who shot to fame while a member of the troupe of the Taganka Theatre under director Yury Lyubimov. Despite severe illness that haunted him in the 1990s, he received many awards, including the Russian Federation State Prize and People's Artist of Russia in 1996. Biography Filatov was born on 24 December 1946, in Kazan. His father was Aleksey Yeremeyevich Filatov (1910 - 1980s), his mother - Klavdia Nikolaevna Filatova (b. 1924). The family frequently moved around, because his father was a radio operator and spent much time in field expeditions. When Leonid was seven years old his parents divorced, and Leonid moved along with his mother to Ashkhabad to join his mother's relatives. While a schoolboy, he had his first publications in the Ashkhabad press. After finishing school he arrived in Moscow in 1965, and tried to become a film director, but failed the entrance exam at the State Institute of Cinematography - VGIK . However, Filatov was persistent, and on the advice of a classmate he took the entrance exams to the actor's department of the Shchukin Theatrical School. In 1965 he was admitted to the course of B.K. Lvova and L.N. Shikhmatov, and graduated from Shchukin Theatrical School as an actor in 1969. In 1969 Filatov became an actor with the troupe of the Moscow Taganka Theatre. His first main role was the lead in the stage version of What Is to Be Done? His career developed with roles in The Master and Margarita, The Cherry Orchard, The House on the Embankment, Fasten Your Seatbelts, Pugachev, Antiworlds, Comrade, Believe, the role of Horatio in Hamlet, Kul'chitskiy in The Fallen and Living, Federzoni in Life of Galileo, and Players-21 (a work with (Sergey Yursky’s creative association of artists).