Innokentii Mikhailovich Smoktunovskii

Born Mar. 28, 1925, in the village of Tat’ianovka, Tomsk Oblast. Soviet Russian actor. People’s Artist of the USSR (1974).

Smoktunovskii studied in the studio of the Krasnoiarsk Theater. From 1946 to 1957 he acted in Noril’sk, Makhachkala, Volgograd, and Moscow, and from 1957 to 1960 at the Leningrad Bolshoi Drama Theater. His best role there was Prince Myshkin in The Idiot, based on Dostoevsky’s novel. In 1973 he performed the title role in A. K. Tolstoy’s Tsar Fedor Ioannovich at the Malyi Theater.

Since 1957, Smoktunovskii has acted in films, where his roles have included Kulikov in Nine Days of One Year (1962), the title role in Hamlet (1964), Detochkin in Watch Out for Your Car! (1966), Porfirii Petrovich in Crime and Punishment (1970), the title role in Tchaikovsky (1970), and Voinitskii in Uncle Vanya (1971). Smoktunovskii’s interpretations are inspired, subtle, and profoundly humane. He endows sharp conflicts as well as tragic and highly comic situations with verisimilitude. Smoktunovskii received the Lenin Prize in 1965 and the Vasil’ev Brothers State Prize of the RSFSR in 1971. He has also been awarded the Order of Lenin and several medals.