Come Look at Me : Premier prix du Festival « Fenêtre sur l’Europe » de Vyborg, 2001
Biography
Oleg Yankovsky was born on February 23, 1944 in Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan. In 1965, he graduated from the Saratov National Higher Conservatory of Drama (Саратовское театральное училище им.Слонова) and began acting in this theater.
In 1975 Oleg Yankovsky left for Moscow where he worked for the Lenkom Theatre (Московский театр имени Ленинского комсомола). His film debut was in 1968 with his first role in The Shield and the Sword (Щит и меч) which made him one of the most famous actors in the Soviet Union. Other roles for the very charismatic actor followed one after the other. In 1974 Yankovsky played the role of the father in The Mirror (Зеркало), one of the most important works of director Andrei Tarkovsky. But their relationship was put to the test when Tarkovsky chose Anatoly Solonitsyn for the role of Hamlet on the stage of the Lenkom Theatre, a role that Yankovsky had dreamed of.
A few years later, after Solonitsyn's death, Tarkovsky offered Oleg Yankovsky the lead role in his film Nostalgia (Ностальгия), and then told him about his plans to make Hamlet, but the project was never realized.
In the early 1980s, when the political and economic crisis in the country was worsening, the characters played by Yankovsky in Willing Lover (Влюблен по собственному желанию) and especially in Flights between dreams and reality (Полëты во сне и наяву) are considered by critics as symbolic of the era. The hero of Roman Balayan's film, Sergei Makarov, is in the midst of a midlife crisis, an eternal child, he refuses to be confronted with the reality of life and gets lost in relationship difficulties. This character is the embodiment of a whole lost generation of the 70s and 80s, people who reject the lies of society; he becomes a cult hero of the last years of the Soviet system.
In one of his interviews Yankovsky says that he tried to convey the pain of a man feeling useless. Another side of the actor appears in his work for television under the direction of his director from the Lenkom Theater, Mark Zakharov. Baron Munchausen, played by Yankovski in a TV movie, is a character outside of time, already because he simply refuses to obey the clock and the calendar, but also because, as the hero of a classic tale, he is completely contemporary, and, as is often the case, anything but conformist. Yankovski is one of Marc Zakharov's favorite actors; they are very close in their aesthetic and social conceptions. It is no accident that when asked whether he would ever stage an opera, Zakharov jokingly replied, “I’m afraid Yankovsky won’t be able to sing the part of Hermann” (in Tchaikovsky’s opera The Queen of Spades).
Yankovsky is one of the few actors who can bring out the intellectual power of characters, often from classical literary works, as in The Kreutzer Sonata (Крейцерова соната), based on the novella by Leo Tolstoy, or in A Hunting Accident (Мой ласковый и нежный зверь), based on Anton Chekhov.
During his career he was brought to play in about fifty films (the biography of the Theater and the actor's website even say a hundred) and many plays. According to the magazine "Soviet Screen" (Советский экран) he was considered in 1984 as the best actor of his country.
During the 90s Russian cinema was in crisis and it was a difficult period for the actor. He worked abroad, in particular, in France.
Yankovsky is the winner of many prizes and awards. He was the last actor to be awarded the title of People's Artist of the Soviet Union, a week before its breakup in 1991. For several years, he chaired the Sochi International Film Festival (Kinotavr).
In 2001, he directed with Mikhail Agranovich Come Look at Me (Приходи на меня посмотреть).
Yankovsky often repeats in his interviews that his greatest achievement is his family: his wife, actress Ludmila Zorina, his son, director Philip Yankovsky, his daughter-in-law, actress Oksana Fandera and his grandchildren.
