Rostislav Plyatt

Rostislav Yanovich Plyatt (; — 30 June 1989) was a Soviet and Russian stage and film actor. He was named People's Artist of the USSR in 1961 and awarded the USSR State Prize in 1982. Biography Born in Rostov-on-Don (modern-day Rostov Oblast of Russia) as Rostislav Ivanovich Plyat, the future actor was so obsessed with theatre that he decided to "correct" his name at the passport office to make it more euphonious and memorable. His father, Ivan Iosifovich Plyat, was a lawyer of Polish descent, "although a very russified one". His Ukrainian mother Zinaida Pavlovna Zakamennaya came from Poltava and died eight years later from tuberculosis. Ivan Plyat then moved to Moscow where he married Anna Nikolaevna Volikovskaya who raised Rostislav as her own son. He was baptized in Russian Orthodoxy and only spoke the Russian language. Plyatt studied in the Moscow secondary school where he visited drama classes led by a popular Maly Theatre actor Vladimir Lebedev and then — by a Moscow Art Theatre actress Varvara Sokolova-Zalesskaya who introduced him to the basics of the Stanislavski's system. After that he decided to become a professional actor and in 1926 unsuccessfully tried to join the Moscow Art Theatre troupe. He then entered the Theatre-Studio led by Yuri Zavadsky where he spent the next 11 years, performing in mostly comedy roles, although with years he established himself as a serious drama actor. Among his lifetime roles was George Bernard Shaw whom he portrayed in 1933 in The Devil's Disciple and then reprised in 1963 in both Caesar and Cleopatra (where he also played Caesar) and Jerome Kilty's Dear Liar: A Comedy of Letters.