Oleg Vidov

Oleg Borisovich Vidov (Russian: Олег Борисович Видов; June 11, 1943 – May 15, 2017) was a Soviet and American actor, film director and producer. He appeared in 50 films since 1961.

Biography

Oleg Vidov was born in the village Filimonki, Leninsky District, Moscow Oblast (according to other sources – in the Peredeltcy village of the Moscow Oblast or Vidnoye, Moscow Oblast). His mother Varvara Ivanovna Vidova was a teacher and a school principle. His father Boris Nikolaevich Garnevich was an economist. According to his fifth wife and Vidov's stepmother Irina Vavilova, Garnevich «was a big man» and served as an assistant of Lazar Kaganovich. Vidov was raised under his mother's surname. Their family lived in the USSR, Germany and Mongolia.

Vidov played his first episodic role in 1960 in the teen drama My Friend, Kolka! In 1962 he entered actor's courses at VGIK led by Yakov Segel and Yuri Pobedonostsev. As a student he acted in a number of movies, including main parts in The Blizzard and An Ordinary Miracle (both from 1964). He graduated in 1966 and continued his active movie career. He was also noticed by foreign directors and was given permission to perform in such films as Hagbard and Signe (by Denmark, Sweden and Iceland) and Battle of Neretva (by Yugoslavia, Italy, West Germany and United States), as well as a joined Soviet-Italian-American production Waterloo.

In 1970 he met and married an actress Natalia Vasilievna Fedotova. According to the most popular version, she was a daughter of the powerful KGB general Vasily Fedotov known as a close friend of Leonid Brezhnev and his daughter Galina Brezhneva. Vidov himself claimed that his father-in-law was in fact a professor of Russian history who worked in a university with no relation to KGB, although he confirmed that Galina Brezhneva was a close friend of his wife. Together they had a son Vyacheslav. Soon Vidov started dating a VGIK student Malvina Vishnya, which led to many public scandals. He filed for divorce in 1976. After that Fedotova and Brezhneva did everything to ruin Vidov's career. Directors stopped offering him big roles. In 1978 he himself finished director's courses at VGIK, but couldn't receive his diploma for a long period of time.

In the early 1980s Vidov directed a short film critical of Soviet transportation policies, and as a result he was no longer allowed to tour Eastern bloc countries. In 1983, he was given permission to live and work in Yugoslavia with his second wife who herself was a Yugoslavian actress. In May 1985, Soviet authorities unexpectedly gave him 72 hours to return to Moscow, so an Austrian actor friend helped procure an Austrian visa for him. Together they drove to the Yugoslavian-Austrian border where he escaped into Austria. Vidov was then able to emigrate to the U.S. under a refugee visa from the American embassy in Rome obtained with the help of the International Rescue Committee. Oleg and his wife obtained international distribution rights to the award-winning Soyuzmultfilm Studio animation library in 1992 and helped popularize Soviet animation around the world.

In 2007 Vidov co-founded Malibu Beach Recovery Center, a well-respected alcohol and drug treatment program based on the principles of neuroscience in Malibu, California. Vidov served as Chairman of the Board, and his wife Joan Borsten Vidov as CEO, until June 2014 when they sold the Center to a medical investment branch of Wells Fargo Bank. The Malibu Beach Recovery Center has been featured on television shows such as A&E's Intervention.

Death

Vidov died on May 15, 2017 from complications following a battle with cancer at his Westlake Village, California home at the age of 73.

Selected filmography

• My Friend, Kolka! (1961)
• Walking the Streets of Moscow (1963)
• I Am Twenty (1964)
• An Easy Life (1964)
• The Blizzard (1964)
• An Ordinary Miracle (1964)
• Hagbard and Signe (1967)
• Battle of Neretva (1969)
• Waterloo (1970)
• Gentlemen of Fortune (1971)
• Tecumseh (1972)
• The Headless Horseman (1972)
• Moscow, My Love (1974)
• Red Heat (1988)
• Wild Orchid (1990)
• Love Affair (1994)
• The Immortals (1995)
• Police Story 4: First Strike (1997)
• Wishmaster 2: Evil Never Dies (1999)
• A Christmas Tree and a Wedding (2000)
• Thirteen Days (2000)
• Alias (2005-2006)
• Say It in Russian (2007)
• Player 5150 (2008)