Innokentiy Mikhailovich Smoktunovsky (Russian: Иннокентий Михайлович Смоктуновский) (March 28, 1925 – August 3, 1994) was a Russian actor acclaimed as the "king of Soviet actors". He was named People's Artist of the USSR in 1974 and the Hero of Socialist Labour in 1990.
Smoktunovsky (birth name Smoktunovich) was born in a Siberian village and served in the Red Army during World War II. In 1946, he joined a theatre in Krasnoyarsk, later moving to ...
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Innokentiy Mikhailovich Smoktunovsky (Russian: Иннокентий Михайлович Смоктуновский) (March 28, 1925 – August 3, 1994) was a Russian actor acclaimed as the "king of Soviet actors". He was named People's Artist of the USSR in 1974 and the Hero of Socialist Labour in 1990.
Smoktunovsky (birth name Smoktunovich) was born in a Siberian village and served in the Red Army during World War II. In 1946, he joined a theatre in Krasnoyarsk, later moving to Moscow. In 1957, he was invited by Georgi Tovstonogov to join the Bolshoi Drama Theatre of Leningrad, where he stunned the public with his dramatic interpretation of Prince Myshkin in Dostoyevsky's The Idiot. His career in film was launched by Mikhail Romm's movie Nine Days of One Year (1962). In 1964, he was cast in the role of Hamlet in the celebrated Grigori Kozintsev's screen version of Shakespeare's play, which won him a praise from Laurence Olivier and the Lenin Prize. Many English critics even ranked the Hamlet of Smoktunovsky above the...
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