Biographie
Nonna Mordyukova, a leading actress in Soviet cinema, was often cast as a Russian peasant woman.
She was born Noyabrina (Nonna) Viktorovna Mordyukova on November 25, 1925, into a Cossack family in Konstantinovka, Donetsk province, Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union. Her father was Viktor Konstantinovich Mordyukov, and her mother was Irina Petrovna Mordyukova. From a young age, Nonna loved films and aspired to become an actress. In the 1930s, she moved with her family to Krasnodar province in Southern Russia, where her mother served as chairwoman of a kolkhoz (collective farm). There, Nonna endured the Nazi occupation during World War II.
Between 1945 and 1950, she studied acting at the Soviet State Institute of Cinema (VGIK) under Boris Bibikov and Olga Pyzhova. While in Moscow, she debuted in film as Ulyana Gromova, the female lead in The Young Guard (1948), a patriotic film about children in the anti-fascist resistance. This role made her an immediate star in the Soviet Union and earned her the State Stalin Prize. In subsequent films, she was often typecast as a peasant woman and became renowned as the embodiment of a strong-willed Russian woman.
After two decades of success in Soviet propaganda films, Mordyukova portrayed Klavdia Vavilova in Komissar (1967), a Red Army cavalry commissar who faces an unexpected pregnancy. She stays with a Jewish family to give birth, an experience that softens her outlook on family life. Although made in 1967, the film was censored for 20 years, and director Aleksandr Askoldov faced prosecution by the Soviet Communist Party. It was only during Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika and glasnost that the film was released, winning several international awards, including the Silver Bear at the 1988 Berlinale. The censorship was politically motivated: the film, based on a story by Vasiliy Grossman, presented a pro-Semitic perspective and an unofficial view of the communist occupation of Ukraine.
Mordyukova received much acclaim for her supporting role as Superintendent Barbara Plyushch in The Diamond Arm (1969), the most popular Russian comedy ever made. In it, she portrayed a stereotypical Soviet-style apartment manager—a small-minded woman with a loud voice. Other notable works include Prostaya istoriya (1960), Predsedatel (1964), War and Peace (1965) directed by Sergey Bondarchuk, and Russkoye pole (1972) directed by Nikolai Moskalenko, where she acted opposite her son, Vladimir Tikhonov.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, she remained one of the Soviet Union's most beloved actresses. In 1992, the British Cinema Encyclopedia "Who is Who" ranked her among the top ten actresses of the 20th century. Following the Soviet Union's collapse, her career slowed; in the last 15 years of her life, she appeared in only three films: Luna Park (1992), Shirli-Myrli, and her final role in Mama (1999). During this period, she also authored a memoir titled Ne plach, kazachka (Don't Cry, Cossack Woman). Over her more than 50-year career, she played over 60 leading and supporting roles in Soviet film and television.
Nonna Mordyukova was honored as People's Actress of the USSR in 1974. She received State Prizes from both the USSR and Russia and was decorated by Soviet and Russian governments. She was married to fellow actor and classmate Vyacheslav Tikhonov, with whom she had a son, Vladimir Tikhonov. Nonna Mordyukova passed away from heart failure and lung disease on July 6, 2008, in a Moscow hospital. She was buried at Kuntsevskoe Cemetery in Moscow, Russia.
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