Svetlana Batalova is a theater actress who grew up in a family of famous actors. The modern viewer is practically unaware of the name and fate of this woman, whose life was long, but not easy. This article presents the biography of actress Svetlana Batalova.
Early years
Svetlana Nikolaevna Batalova was born on June 21, 1923 in Moscow in the family of famous actors of that time - Olga Androvskaya and Nikolai Batalov. Svetlana spent her entire childhood behind the scenes of the Moscow Art Theater and on film sets, watching her star parents.
By the age of seventeen, the girl had no doubts about choosing a profession - she decided to follow in the footsteps of her parents and become an actress. However, the start of the war prevented the timely admission to the theater university - in 1941, during the evacuation of the Moscow Art Theater, Svetlana and her mother were transferred to Saratov, where she remained until 1943. In the photo below, thirteen-year-old Svetlana Batalova and her mother Olga Androvskaya.
In 1943, the long-awaited admission to the acting department of the Moscow Art Theater School took place. Other educational institutions are notwere considered, since Svetlana's mother was an actress of this theater and taught at his studio school.
Career in theater
After graduating in 1947, Svetlana Batalova was enrolled in the troupe of the Moscow Art Theater. Her debut role was a maid in the play "The Last Days" based on Bulgakov's play. Despite the big names of her parents, Batalova did not want to build her creative career at their expense, and therefore said that she was just the namesake of Nikolai Petrovich. She also asked her mother not to help herself in anything.
Unfortunately, the young actress did not have enough talent, and therefore, not using her connections, for her forty years of service, she never played a single major or even significant role. In addition to the numerous unnamed roles of girls at the ball, maids, nurses, passers-by and visitors, only a few more or less noticeable ones can be distinguished. Among them are Water ("The Blue Bird"), Jenny ("Jupiter Laughs"), Marguerite Kerl ("Mary Stuart"), Flipota ("Tartuffe").
After the separation of the Moscow Art Theater in 1987, Svetlana Batalova was an actress of the Gorky Moscow Art Theater for two more years, after which she ended her acting career.
Private life
In the first year of service in the theater, Svetlana Nikolaevna met the actor Peter Chernov. He was six years older than Svetlana. However, this did not prevent the romantic relationship between the actors. They got married in 1948 and lived together for forty years - until Chernov's death. He passed away in 1988 from cancer.
For some unknown reason, Peter andSvetlana was not. They spent their entire life together in a four-room apartment on Tverskoy Boulevard, which belonged to the parents of Svetlana Nikolaevna. The three of them lived with Olga Androvskaya until her death in 1975. Below is a photo of the husband of actress Peter Chernov.
Relationship with Alexei Batalov
The famous Soviet actor Alexei Batalov was the actress's cousin. In childhood, the future actors talked and saw each other very little, since Alexei's parents, both actors, were also associated with other theaters and film studios. They only crossed paths on rare family occasions. However, the children had little in common due to their age difference. Their relationship improved in 1953, when Batalov became an actor at the Moscow Art Theater for a while and shared the stage with his cousin. However, he left this theater after only three years due to disagreements with the director. Alexey Batalov in the photo below.
A strange incident put an end to the relationship between the two actors. When Olga Androvskaya was dying of cancer in 1975, she gave her nephew Alexei a family heirloom as a souvenir - a ring that Konstantin Stanislavsky himself gave to her husband Nikolai Batalov in 1916. It is still unknown why the brother and sister stopped talking after that.
No one who knew Svetlana would say that she could envy Alexei and regret even such a valuable thing for him. But on the part of Batalov himself, it was quite possible to feel the injustice of his possession of thisrelics. Not wanting to experience guilt in front of Svetlana, he did not think of anything better than to simply stop communicating with her. Since then, Alexey and Svetlana have never spoken.
Recent years
Because of her natural modesty, Svetlana Batalova spent her whole life quietly and imperceptibly. After the death of her husband, she exchanged her luxurious apartment for a two-room apartment of her neighbors, simply because she considered herself unworthy of living alone in such mansions, and the neighbors had children, which means they need it more. The neighbors promised an additional payment, but, embarrassed to remind, Svetlana Nikolaevna did not receive anything from them.
In the late 90s, when it became difficult for the elderly actress to walk, she offered her friend Svetlana Sobinova-Kassil, also an actress, to transfer her apartment to her grandchildren, in exchange for caring for her for the rest of her life. Of course, the grandchildren agreed. However, all their care consisted in a nurse hired for Svetlana. This woman became the only person who took care of the actress in the last ten years of her life.
Actress Svetlana Batalova passed away on April 9, 2011 at the age of 87. The same nurse took care of her cremation, arranging the procedure for her own money, since none of the actress's relatives, including Alexei Batalov, wanted to do this. The funeral was organized by the grandchildren of Sobinova-Kassil. They buried the ashes of Svetlana Nikolaevna at the Novodevichy cemetery next to her parents and husband.
