Leonid Vyacheslavovich Kuravlyov (Russian: Леонид Вячеславович Куравлёв; 8 October 1936 – 30 January 2022) was a Soviet and Russian film actor. He became a People's Artist of the RSFSR in 1976.[1]
Kuravlyov was born in Moscow into a working-class family.[2] His father Vyacheslav Yakovlevich Kuravlyov (1909–1979) worked as a locksmith at the Salyut Machine-Building Association and his mother Valentina Dmitriyevna Kuravlyova (1916–1993) was a hairdresser.[3][4] In 1941 with the start of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union (known in Russia as the Great Patriotic War) his mother was arrested on false report, accused of counter-revolutionary activity (Article 58) and exiled to Karaganda, Kazakh SSR to work at the local plant.[5] In five years she was freed without a right to live in Moscow and sent to Zasheyek, Murmansk Oblast in the Russian far north where she continued working as a hairdresser. In 1948 she managed to get a permission to see her son who spent a year with her at Zasheyek, and in 1951 she finally returned to Moscow.[5][6]
Careeredit
In 1955 Kuravlyov entered VGIK to study acting under Boris Bibikov.[7] He graduated in 1960 and joined the Theater Studio of Film Actors.[8] He made his first movie appearances while still a student. In 1960 he was noted by Vasily Shukshin and took part in his diploma film Reported From Lebyazhye.[9] In 1961 they both starred in the popular melodrama When the Trees Were Tall, and in 1964 Shukshin gave him the leading role in his comedy movie There Is Such a Lad which brought Kuravlyov true fame and which he considered to be the start of his successful movie career.[3] He also acted in Your Son and Brother (1965) and felt so grateful for what the director did for him that he later named his son after Shukshin.[10]
According to Russian actress Lidiya Fedoseyeva-Shukshina, after being tipsy, Kuravlyov openly spoke about his negative attitude towards the leadership of the Soviet Union.[23] She recalled that, drunk, he had opened the window at her house and had shouted to the whole street that he hated the Soviet regime.[23] She had feared that "the police would come and take everyone away as rebels."[23]
Later yearsedit
During the late 1990s he hosted a popular TV programme The World of Books with Leonid Kuravlyov where he talked about new book releases. In two years it was closed and then relaunched with new hosts.[24] In 2012 he was awarded the IV class Order "For Merit to the Fatherland".[25]
In 2014 Kuravlyov along with 100 other Russian members of culture signed an open letter in support of Vladimir Putin's position regarding Ukraine and Crimea.[27] In his last years Kuravlyov lived in a nursing home where he was diagnosed with dementia.[23]
In January 2022, he was hospitalized with pneumonia.[23] According to Kuravlyov's son, tests for COVID-19 were negative.[23]
Deathedit
Kuravlyov died from pneumonia on 30 January 2022, at the age of 85.[19][28]
Selected filmographyedit
All that Jam (Весь этот джем, 2015) as Father Leonty[29]
^Cinema: Encyclopedia Dictionary, main ed. Sergei Yutkevich (1987). — Moscow: Soviet Encyclopedia, p. 222
^ abcdefg""Жил такой парень". Не стало Леонида Куравлева" (in Russian).
^Anna Velidzhagina (20 January 2011). "Леонид Куравлев: Я так был благодарен Шукшину, что назвал в его честь сына(Leonid Kuravlyov: I was so grateful to Shukshin that I named my son after him)". Komsomolskaya Pravda (in Russian).
^"Самый обаятельный и отрицательный. Биография Леонида Куравлева". Rbc.ru (in Russian).