Killed by her son, starved to death: the most tragic fate of Soviet actresses

Talented and beautiful, bright and charismatic … Everyone thought that a dizzying career and a long happy life awaited these actresses, but fate decreed otherwise.

Killed by her son: the tragic fate of Alexandra Zavyalova

They started talking about Alexander Zavyalova after the lyric comedy "Aleshkina's Love", where she played the switchman Zinka, with whom a timid guy - geologist-driller Alyoshka (played by Leonid Bykov) is in love. New proposals from directors poured in one after another: Zavyalova starred in the melodramas "Wait for Letters" and "Bread and Roses", the youth film story "Weekdays and Holidays".

In 1961, the picture of the actress was published in the American magazine Life: photographer Philip Halsman considered that the girl should participate in his project about the most famous people of the USSR. In 1963, Alexandra married the artist Dmitry Buchkin, the couple had a daughter.

Despite the fact that after the birth of a child, Zavyalova temporarily left the cinema and theater, they did not forget about her. During the Moscow International Film Festival, she was the only Soviet actress to receive an invitation to a dinner party at the American Embassy. At her home in Leningrad, she received an Italian delegation, which included the famous Juliet Mazina.

Glory and other stars who became parents early

Nastya Slanevskaya became a star by accident. In 2002, director Sergei Kalvarsky noticed a girl at karaoke. So Anastasia turned into a singer Slava. At the age of 17, Anastasia Slanevskaya became pregnant. The father of Alexandra's daughter, Konstantin Morozov, was engaged in business, but he and Slava had different views on life. Soon after the birth of Sasha in 1999, the couple broke up, but Slava did everything possible so that her child did not need anything. Now Anastasia already has two children: the eldest Alexandra and the youngest Antonina, who was born in 2011 from businessman Anatoly Danilitsky. Young Sasha already has a serious relationship, but Slava is not afraid that her daughter will repeat her fate. The singer is sure that she will be a great grandmother.

In 1964, a fateful meeting took place that changed Zavyalova's whole life: she met a 50-year-old American businessman. A whirlwind romance began, and if before that Alexandra's contacts with foreigners were turned a blind eye, they did not forgive her love for the “enemy of the proletariat”. In the KGB, the American was declared persona non grata and expelled from the USSR, and Zavyalova was labeled as unreliable. Her film career stalled, and her family was destroyed: her husband filed for divorce.

However, Zavyalova soon reappeared on the screen. The director Rezo Esadze helped her in this: he invited the actress to his film "Fro" for the role of the abandoned wife, who realized the need to study and live for the sake of universal happiness. In 1967, Alexandra played one of the main characters in Esadze's melodrama "Four Pages of One Young Life". A whirlwind romance began between Zavyalova and Rezo, but it soon faded away: the director turned out to be too jealous and despotic.

The film Shadows Fade at Noon, released in 1971, became the actress's swan song. She played her most striking role in it, playing a former rich woman, then a nun and a fierce opponent of Soviet power, Pistime Morozova. However, after the success followed by oblivion for 20 years: Zavyalov was not even invited to the premiere of the picture.

The actress left for her homeland in Tambov, where her son Peter was born. Who is the father of the child, Zavyalova did not confess to either relatives or friends. In 1975, a woman was forcibly admitted to a psychiatric clinic due to depression. “I was not allowed to sleep. They gave me an injection with sleeping pills, and then woke me up. Children were not allowed to see me. I screamed, begged, but they closed the doors,”the actress later recalled.

Daughter Tatyana was taken by father Dmitry Buchkin, the boy was sent to an orphanage. Returning, the mother devoted herself to the child: she pampered Peter and did not refuse him anything, not noticing that the guy was rolling downhill - he was drinking and did not want to work.

On February 4, 2016, Alexandra Semyonovna Zavyalova was supposed to be 80 years old. The day before, on February 3, she was found dead in the apartment: Zavyalova was killed with a knife. Peter was found guilty of the murder: the investigators found out that he had attacked his mother during a quarrel, and before that he had embezzled money that Zavyalova had allocated as material assistance.

Zavyalova's son was sentenced to eight years in prison. Alexander was buried at the Smolensk cemetery in St. Petersburg.

Betrayed by her husband, starved to death: the life of Izolda Izvitskaya

Izolda Izvitskaya gained fame thanks to the role of the Red Army woman Maryutka in the film "Forty-first" by Grigory Chukhrai. The critics were delighted: “Isolde Izvitskaya successfully overcomes the great difficulties of the role of a partisan girl. Her character is also built on contrasts: outward rudeness - and girlish purity, illiteracy - and worldly wisdom, severity - and tenderness, "wrote film critic and film critic, doctor of art history Rostislav Yurenev after the film was released.

"Forty-first" was watched by about twenty-five million people, the film received a special award "For original script, humanism and high poetry" in Cannes. Isolde's photograph has appeared on the cover of New York Magazine and in Le Parisien libéré. In honor of Izvitskaya, the Isolde cafe was opened in Paris. But the fame turned out to be fleeting, and Izvitskaya never received other roles of the level of Maryutka: she was only occasionally invited to appear in episodes.

The actress started drinking with her husband, actor Eduard Bredun. Due to alcoholism, every year she was offered fewer and fewer roles. Friends and colleagues urged Isolde to go to a narcologist, but the woman refused, continuing to spend all the money on alcohol - it came to the point that there was no food left in the house. Izvitskaya was finally finished off by her husband's betrayal - he went to her friend, a certain carpet saleswoman. Isolde practically stopped leaving the apartment.

Isolde's body was found by her ex-husband, who dropped by to visit the ex-wife at the request of a theater employee who could not contact Izvitskaya. The door was locked from the inside, no one reacted to the knock: they had to call the locksmith and the police and break the lock. Isolde was found on the floor between the kitchen and the room. As the examination later established, she died of hunger more than a week ago. The actress was 38 years old …

Burned alive: the death of Mikaela Drozdovskaya

Michaela, or, as her friends called her, Mika, lived only 41 years. During this time, she managed to appear in more than 40 films: "Behind a Department Store Window", "Volunteers", "Give a Book of Complaints", "Seven Nurses", "Run", "Mimino" and others. The whole Union knew her voice: Drozdovskaya was voiced by the heroines of famous French comedies.

Mikaela's family life was also going well. She married a famous cardiologist - Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor Vadim Smolensky, the couple had two daughters - Daria and Nika. The family was wealthy, lived in a good apartment, and a nanny and a housekeeper helped Mika with everyday life. The house was always full of guests: celebrities often visited it - screenwriter and actress Larisa Shepitko, director Elem Klimov, poetess Bella Akhmadulina, Italian directors Michelangelo Antonioni and Tonino Guerra.

And in 1978, tragedy struck. They say that Michaela foresaw her: a few months before her death, for no reason at all, she asked her friend Alla Budnitskaya to take care of her youngest daughter Dasha, if something happened to her, Mika. And in the fall, Drozdovskaya went to shoot in Ordzhonikidze.

The house where the actress spent the night was not heated. To keep warm, Michaela turned on the lights, lay down on the bed herself and covered herself with a blanket. When the woman fell asleep, the blanket slid onto the hot lamp and began to smolder. The room was filled with carbon monoxide, and when the fire started, Drozdovskaya was already unconscious. Seeing the smoke, the members of the film crew came running, knocked down the door, and dragged the woman out into the air. The actress received monstrous burns, and the doctors could not save her - Michaela died in terrible agony.

Drozdovskaya's daughter Daria said that a year after Mika's death, her husband got along with another woman. Nika was taken by a friend of Drozdovskaya, Dasha remained to live with her father and his new wife. However, a year later, Alla Budnitskaya took her away - so she fulfilled the promise given to her friend shortly before her death.

Threw herself under the train: Ekaterina Savinova committed suicide

The talent of the future Frosya Burlakova was immediately noticed: she was the only one from the entire course, after graduating from VGIK, was called to the Moscow Art Theater. Soon she played Lyubochka in "Kuban Cossacks", and this role glorified Savinova throughout the Soviet Union.

After that, director Ivan Pyriev drew attention to the young charismatic Siberian woman. Alas, this was not luck: Pyryev was famous for molesting the actresses who played in his films, and did not tolerate rejections. The naive Savinova did not understand for a long time what the director wanted from her, and when it came to outright harassment, she gave him a savory slap in the face.

After that, the actress was on the black list: Pyriev's influence was enough to prevent her from acting. Two main roles, for which Savinova had already been approved, were given to other actresses. After the audition, which she went through, she was not even called back. This went on for 10 years, until Savinova's husband, director Yevgeny Tashkov, spoke out openly against Pyriev, giving Catherine the role of Frosya Burlakova in the film Come Tomorrow. The picture thundered throughout the Union and made Savinova the favorite of millions of viewers.

But this did not become the beginning of a bright streak: it was on the set of Come Tomorrow that Ekaterina drank milk contaminated with brucellosis. The disease gave complications to the nervous system, and the actress had to stay in hospitals twice a year and take a handful of pills every day.

Savinova was very worried about the fact that she could not act in film, and this led to the deepest depression. She even developed symptoms similar to those of schizophrenia. One of Savinova's friends, Olga Gobzeva, said that Catherine heard voices that whispered that she would save her son by suicide.

In the spring of 1970, Ekaterina went to her sister in Novosibirsk and threw herself under the train there, repeating the act of Anna Karenina, whose monologue she read at the entrance exams at VGIK. At the time of her death, Savinova was only 43 years old.

Ekaterina Savinova, Mikaela Drozdovskaya, Alexandra Zavyalova, Izolda Izvitskaya - these strong and beautiful women died early or left their careers. But we still have the memory of them - those unforgettable roles that they played.