2023-08-09 18:27:46
In September 2020, on the eve of Vera Vasilyeva’s 95th birthday, the brilliant actress spoke with a Moskovsky Komsomolets columnist. Now that Vera Kuzminichna is gone, this interview reads completely differently – each word uttered takes on a special weight and intonation.
• Yes, I play, and if I have enough strength, I think I will play again.
• There is a very big fear – to forget the text, fear to stagger, because the head is spinning … And what will the public think then?
• I only felt old this year, and before that I played like I was 60.
• They say that older actors usually play with a prompter in their ear – I don’t know, I haven’t tried it.
• Everyone thought: maybe during the quarantine strongmen will come? ..
• The only thing that is not difficult for me is to talk to the viewer on my own behalf.
• I love that I was a bit of a hack: firstly, it gives a feeling of freedom, the opportunity to improvise, and secondly (this is the main thing) – not such a panic attitude to any of my mistakes.
• Andryusha Mironov was so brilliant that I understood: next to him that I am, that, say, Valechka Sharykina – nothing will change in his game. He didn’t need a partner.
• At the Maly Theater I was rehearsing The Queen of Spades and on the way to the backstage I stepped on the hem of my dress and fell – dislocated my shoulder … But I continued to play Radamesa (play “Requiem for Radames”), and in the general scenes Olechka ( Aroseva) held me by the shoulder and repeated: “Verushechka, hold on, hold on, otherwise we will lose the performance …”
• I have never seen directors show any interest in themselves. So come and say: “I would like to play Juliet, or Adrienne Lecovreur, or even Madame Bovary!” – meant to condemn himself to ridicule.
• The younger I was, the closer to my heroines – Nastenka from the film “The Legend of the Siberian Land” or Olga from “Wedding with a Dowry”.
• I have never had such a thing that I wildly got better, and then did not know how to lose weight. Always the same weight – plus or minus two kilograms. This is nature, not the result of exhausting oneself.
• In a five-meter room in a theater dormitory, I had a housekeeper Anna Ivanovna. Before us, she worked as a cook for some important people and liked to repeat: “Real gentlemen eat only game.” And when we (with her husband Vladimir Ushakov) asked her to cook a chicken, she seemed to despise us.
• Valentina Tokarskaya) told me this: “Let’s go to the market, Vera, we need to buy high-heeled shoes.” “Isn’t it difficult to walk on high?” I asked. “Not difficult. If you’re a woman, you have to walk high.”
• In the parental home, everything was extremely modest, it was impossible to dream of any theater. And then – cinema, theater, the Stalin Prize …
• This is a fantastic story of my life: in the third year of the institute, an unknown girl suddenly gets into the film, and even Pyryev himself!
• For the first time in my life I ended up abroad (in Prague): a divine city, a lot of money … There I bought myself a seal coat with a luxurious collar for the winter, and a gray one for the spring.
• I believe in God. God for me is kindness, justice, the desire for people to be happy. Sometimes it’s forgiveness and consolation.
• I don’t have anyone from my family…
• Love is happiness. When you love, you want to live. Even if love is not reciprocated. I will say this: God forbid not to love anyone!
Vera Vasilyeva died at 97: shots and bright roles of the people’s artist
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Published in the newspaper “Moskovsky Komsomolets” No. 29089 dated August 10, 2023
Newspaper headline: Vera Vasilyeva: favorites
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