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Bruno Arturovich Freindlikh was born on October 10, 1909, in Russia. His German ancestors were invited to Russia by Tsar Peter the Great and settled in St. Petersburg around the 1700s. The Freindlikh family established a successful glass-making factory in the Russian capital. Young Bruno received an excellent private education and was an amateur actor during his school years. From 1931 to 1934, he studied acting at the Leningrad Theatrical School, followed by studies at the Leningrad Institute of Arts, graduating in 1938 as an actor.
Freindlikh performed on stage at the Leningrad State Theatre named after Komsomol, which was evacuated to Tashkent during World War II. During the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, all members of the Freindlikh family were arrested as "German suspects" by order of Joseph Stalin. Bruno Freindlikh avoided arrest because he was evacuated with the theatre to Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Between 1941 and 1945, he worked at the Leningrad Theatre for the Young Audience in evacuation and returned to Leningrad after the siege ended in 1945. From 1946 to 1948, he was part of the Leningrad Bolshoi Drama Theatre.
From 1948 until 2002, Bruno Freindlikh was the leading actor at the Pushkin Drama Theatre in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). His most acclaimed role there was his portrayal of Ivan Turgenev in the biographical play Elegy. His stage partners included notable Russian actors such as Nikolay Cherkasov, Nikolai Simonov, Konstantin Skorobogatov, Yuriy Tolubeev, Aleksandr Borisov, Vasiliy Merkurev, Leonid Vivyen, Olga Lebzak, Nina Urgant, Igor Gorbachyov, and Valentina Panina. In 1941, Freindlikh played Hamlet on stage in the first collaboration between director Grigoriy Kozintsev and writer Boris Pasternak, prior to their creation of the legendary film.
Bruno Freindlikh was honored with the State Prize of the USSR for his film work and received numerous other awards and decorations from the Soviet state. He was bestowed the title of People's Artist of the USSR. He passed away on July 9, 2002, in St. Petersburg and was buried at the "Literatorskie mostki" Necropolis of The Masters of Art in Volkovskoe Cemetery, St. Petersburg, Russia.
