Anatoliy Papanov

Anatoly Papanov was a Soviet actor, born in 1922 in Vyasma in the Smolensk region and raised in Moscow. He worked at a Moscow ball-bearing factory and acted as an amateur at a workers' club studio before training at the Moscow Theatre Institute (GITIS), graduating in 1946. After two seasons at the Klaipeda Drama Theatre in Latvia, he joined the Moscow Theatre of Satire in 1948 and stayed with the troupe for almost forty years. His first film work was an extra part in Mikhail Romm's Lenin v Oktyabre (1937), and his role as General Sepilin in Zhivye i myortvye brought him the Brothers Vasilyev State Prize in 1966. He became best known for Leonid Gayday's comedies, especially as the gangster chief Lyolik in The Diamond Arm (1969), a box-office leader in Soviet theaters, and he also appeared in Eldar Ryazanov's Beware of the Car! (1966). He was named People's Actor of the USSR in 1973.