Nikolai Karachentsov

Nikolai Petrovich Karachentsov (Russian: Николай Петрович Караченцов, born October 27, 1944) is a Soviet/Russian cinema star, stage actor (Lenkom Theatre), and People's Artist of the RSFSR (1989). 

State Prize of the Russian Federation (2003).

Contents

Biography

Early life

Nikolai Karachentsov was born on October 27, 1944 in Moscow, on the Clean Ponds. Father Pyotr Yakovlevich Karachentsov (1907-1998) worked for many years in the magazine "Ogoniok" as a graphic artist, Honored Artist of the RSFSR (1967). Mother Yanina Brunak (1913-1992), was a choreographer, put on plays in major musical theaters, took part in staging performances at the Bolshoi Theatre, Kazan Musical Theater, Ulan Bator Music Theater in Mongolia, administered a ballet school and organized the First national ensemble of Vietnam, worked in Syria and London.

Nikolai grew up without a father, so when Yanina Evgenyevna would leave Moscow for work, Kolya studied and lived in a boarding school. In school days, he spent all summer vacations in the recreation center of the All-Russian Theater Society in the village of Shylykovo, Kostroma Oblast. In his childhood, Karachentsov was seriously engaged in swimming and by the age of 13 he became the champion of the USSR's central sport school for diving. He left his swimming lessons when, together with his mother, he went to live in Ulaanbaatar for two years.

While studying in high school, Nikolai Karachentsov joined the "Active" group, created at the Central Children's Theater. The duties of "activists" included duty in the building of the theater and monitoring of the observance of order by schoolchildren. And at the same time, the attendants had the opportunity to see the performances. Soon, at the Center for Children's Art opened an amateur studio for schoolchildren. Karachentsov was one of the first to sign up. The directors of the studio were Pechnikov and Minkovskaya. In the Club of Arts at the theater Karachentsov listened to a course of lectures for schoolchildren. Lecturers were famous directors and actors.

Nikolai Karachentsov's first role was in the play "Figaro". By this time, he already planned to become an actor.

Theatre career

In 1963, Nikolai entered the Moscow Art Theatre School (course of Viktor Monyukov), which he graduated with honors in 1967.[6] His role in the student performances "Snowstorm" and "Ivan Vasilyevich" received a high professional assessment. Usually school graduates were automatically "distributed" to the Moscow Art Theater, but in 1967 at the Lenkom Theatre, in connection with the departure from the post of the main director Anatoly Efros, there was a catastrophic situation of shortage of actors, and Karachentsov among the top ten students assigned to this theater.

Among the first works of Nikolai were the plays staged by Efros: performances "104 pages about love", "My poor Marat", "The movie is being shot", "Fear and despair in the third empire", "Farewell to arms!".

In 1973 Mark Zakharov became director of the theatre. After Nikolai's successful first experience in the play "Autograd 21" (1973), Zakharov invited the actor for the main role of Till Eulenspiegel in his next play "Till" (1974). The play, based on the novel by Charles De Coster, was written by playwright Grigori Gorin, and the composer Gennady Gladkov composed the music for the production. Through Karachentsov's performance, the character of Till - a buffoon, bully and rebel - became a cult figure of the 1970s Soviet youth, From the theater's repertoire "Till" was filmed only in 1992.

The rock opera of the composer Alexey Rybnikov "Stardom and Death of Joaquin Murieta" (based on the poetic drama of Pablo Neruda), staged by Mark Zakharov in 1976, was also well received. In it, Karachentsov played two roles at once: the ranger and Death. This production was part of the theater's program until 1993.

The most famous theatrical work of Karachentsov is the role of Count Rezanov in the rock opera Juno and Avos - a play that became a calling card of Lenkom. The premiere was held on July 9, 1981 (music by Alexey Rybnikov, libretto by Andrei Voznesensky). Karachentsov took vocal lessons from the famous musician Pavel Smeyan, who played in Juno and Avos the role of the Principal Writer. 

In 1983, the show was recorded for television and the same year the famous French couturier Pierre Cardin introduced the Juno and Avos to the French audience at the Espace Cardin Theater in Paris, followed by a triumphant tour around the world: the performance was shown in the USA, Germany, Netherlands and other countries.[8] Karachentsov became one of the leading actors of Lenkom.

Other popular productions with his participation were "Optimistic tragedy", "Dictatorship of conscience", "School for emigrants", "Sorry", "Czech photo". Among the last theatrical roles of the actor were prince Alexander Menshikov in "Balakirev the Buffoon" and Domenico Soriano in the "City of Millionaires".

Film career

Nikolai Karachentsov began to act in cinema in 1967: the first films with his participation were "Strokes to the portrait of Vladimir Lenin", "And again May." But the actor began to play actively in film only after the triumph of "Till". Mark Zakharov did not use him in his screen works, with the exception of small roles in the television films of The Twelve Chairs (1976) and The House That Swift Built (1982). Nevertheless, even at the beginning of his film career Karachentsov played one of his best known roles - Busygin in the film adaptation of Alexander Vampilov's play The Elder Son (1975).

Beginning in the second half of the 1970s, Karachentsov became one of the most filmed actors in the Soviet Union. Nikolai Karachentsov always performed stunts in his films himself. His popularity was enhanced by roles in such films as The Dog in the Manger, The Adventures of the Elektronic, The Trust That Went Bust, White Dew, A Man from the Boulevard des Capucines, A Bright Personality, Deja Vu and many others. In total the filmography of Nikolai Karachentsov includes more than 100 roles in the cinema.

He also worked on dubbing foreign films, for example he voiced in Russian the roles of French actor Jean-Paul Belmondo. In addition, he took part in voicing many cartoons and worked extensively on television and radio.

From the beginning of the 1990s Karachentsov for many years was the chairman of the jury of the Andrei Mironov Actor's Song Festival. In 1991 he was elected secretary of the Union of Theatre Workers of the Russian Federation. He is a member of the Russian Academy of Cinematographic Arts "NIKA". In 1994 together with his friend the stuntman and teacher Nikolai Astapov created in Krasnoarmeysk the School of Arts of Nikolay Karachentsov.

One of the main hobbies of Nikolai Karachentsov was tennis. He has repeatedly become a participant in a number of tennis tournaments, including "Big Hats", "Marco-Garros", for the cup of the "Big Cap". In 1994, paired with TV presenter Boris Notkin was allowed to play with the first president of the Russian Federation Boris Yeltsin. Among the regular partners of Karachentsov were tennis player and coach Shamil Tarpishchev, vice-president of the Tennis Federation of the North-West region Igor Dzhelepov, composer Maksim Dunayevsky and poet Yury Ryashentsev.

Injury

On February 28, 2005, Karachentsov was driving to Moscow in a hurry after finding out about the death of his mother-in-law. Due to his hurry, he lost control of his vehicle and crashed into a street light pole, suffering a traumatic brain injury. After a month-long coma, he began regaining motor skills, finally being able to get up onto a stage and talk to an audience in 2007.

He is still severely disabled.

Selected filmography

actor

• The Elder Son (Старший сын, 1976) as student Vladimir Busygin
• The Twelve Chairs (Двенадцать стульев, 1976) as actor in the theater "Columbus"
• The Dog in the Manger (Собака на сене, 1978) as Marquis of Ricardo
• Errors of Youth (Ошибки юности, 1978)
• The Adventures of the Electronic (Приключения Электроника, 1979) as Urrie
• Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson (Приключения Шерлока Холмса и доктора Ватсона. Кровавая надпись, 1979) as Jefferson Hope
• The House That Swift Built (Дом, который построил Свифт, 1982) as Flim, the Lilliputian
• Juno and Avos (Юнона и Авось) (rock opera also released as a TV film) as Nikolay Rezanov
• The Trust That Has Burst (Трест, который лопнул, 1983) as Jeff Peters
• White Dew (Белые Росы, 1983) as Vasiliy
• How to Become Happy (Как стать счастливым, 1986) as Gosha
• A Man from the Boulevard des Capuchines (Человек с бульвара Капуцинов, 1987) as Billy King
• Moonzund (Моонзунд, 1987) as Von Knupfer
• Bright Personality (Светлая личность, 1988) as Egor Filyurin
• The Witches Cave (Подземелье ведьм, 1989) as Jean
• Two arrows. Stone Age Detective (Две стрелы. Детектив каменного века, 1989) as Fighting man

voice

• Dog in Boots (Пёс в сапогах, 1981) as Gascon Dog 
• The Cat Who Walked by Herself (Кошка, которая гуляла сама по себе, 1988) as Hourse