His first appearance on the big screen was in the musical melodrama "A chance meeting." He played Igor Savchenko. It was 1936. Then there were many other interesting and diverse roles. Grisha in “A chance meeting” and Lebedev in “The Bright Way”, Almagama in “Synegoria” and Nikolai in “The Court of Honor”, ​​Khokhlov in “Towards the Black Sea” and Alexander Petrovich in “Enchanted Desna”. In his acting biography, there were more than fifty films and series in which he not only embodied the characters, but lived their lives. That's all he, Evgeny Samoilov, one of the most talented actors of Soviet cinema of the twentieth century.
Childhood
The future People’s Artist of the USSR was born in St. Petersburg on April 16, 1912 in a working class family. His dad - Valerian Savvich - worked all his life at the Putilov factory, having come there as a very young boy and having traveled a long way from a laborer to a cannon workshop master. His mother, Anna Pavlovna, ran the household. My father made good money, so he managed to get a three-room apartment in a house on the Moscow-Narva outpost. It was here that little Zhenya spent his childhood.
Unfortunately, his parents died of starvation during the long blockade of Leningrad.
Happy time
The Samoilov family house was not far from Yekaterinhof. Zhenya was very fond of walking in this park. He was delighted with the palace and ponds of the era of Peter I.
Evgeny Samoilov always remembered his childhood as the happiest and most wonderful time in his life. Parents loved each other and their children, they were very caring and kind. And in their house they managed to create an ideal atmosphere of mutual understanding and trust of one family member to the others. Although Samoilov Sr. was a simple worker, he was fond of art and literature. Very often, he arranged home gatherings at the table under the lampshade and read to Genet and his brother Gogol, Pushkin, Turgenev and other classics of Russian literature.
Leisure
It was the parents who created the children happy years of childhood and youth. Dad was a fairly principled person, but not at all strict. Mom was very kind and loving. She was a guardian angel of a friendly family every day. Parents brought up their children so that spiritual interests were always higher for them than material wealth. An interesting leisure was always invented by dad, who was a man of various hobbies. It was thanks to him that Evgeny Samoilov grew up as a very well-read person, well versed in art. Very often Zhenya attended the Alexandrinsky Theater and the Bolshoi Theater. But he was much more interested in painting. This, apparently, was manifested by the parental genes. Evgeny Samoilov spent almost all his free time in the halls of the Hermitage and the Russian Museum. His biography is full of such facts: he preferred the Wanderers to all other artists and cherished the dream of entering the Academy of Arts.
The beginning of the theatrical path
His friend, who dreamed of a scene, somehow persuaded Samoilov to audition at the art studio on Liteiny, so that he would be the so-called support group. Not expecting this, Eugene found his last name in the list of accepted. Now in the evenings he went to classes in the studio for the acting department.
After graduating from the Polytechnic in 1930, he was accepted into the troupe of the Theater of Acting of Leningrad under the direction of Leonid Vivien.
In the same period, a young man meets a girl who has become the meaning of his whole life. So, the wife of Evgeny Samoilov - Zinaida Levin. A couple of years after the wedding, in 1934, the couple gave birth to a daughter, Tatyana (future famous actress, Veronika in the film “Cranes Are Flying”), and in 1945, his son Alexei was born, who devoted himself to the stage of Sovremennik and the Maly Theater . Spouses in love, harmony and understanding lived together for 62 years.
Thanks to Zinaida, Samoilov gets to see Vsevolod Meyerhold, who accepted him into the GomTiM troupe. In this theater, where he worked until 1938, Eugene played a lot of interesting roles: Grishka Otrepiev, Hernani, Chatsky ...
His film masterpieces
Thanks to the same Meyerhold, Samoilov’s film career began. The debut film was “A chance meeting,” in which Evgeny Samoilov played the main role of Grigory Rybin. The hero meets a girl who has great athletic abilities, he trains her, they create a family. But when he learns about pregnancy, he turns from a loving husband into a scoundrel, to whom sports achievements are more expensive than a baby.
In those same years, Evgeny Samoilov starred in the movie Tom Sawyer. The actor plays two roles of twin brothers.
After the release of the film "Chapaev", Alexander Dovzhenko was tasked with creating his Ukrainian version - about Schors. The only candidate suitable as well as possible turned out to be Evgeny Valerianovich. Despite the external dissimilarity, he managed to create the role of a fiery revolutionary, an experienced red commander with great faith in a good future. Thanks to these shootings, the actor learned to ride and quite decently learned the Ukrainian language.
After this film, offers simply rained down on Samoilov. He played Kirill Zhdarkin, Alexei Lebedev. And just before the war, the last chord sounded in the filming of the musical comedy “Hearts of Four”. It was a picture consisting of funny misunderstandings in the vaudeville style. Evgeny Samoilov, whose biography has now become an unbelievable pace replenished with new and interesting roles, embodied the character of Peter Kolchin on the screen. It was released to the screens only after 4 years, in 1945. The audience received him with great sympathy.
He also had a unique picture - “At six o’clock in the evening after the war”, where Samoilov played the role of Vasya Kudryashov. They shot it in 1944, but the director Ivan Pyryev somehow knew that the Victory Day, which the main characters were going to meet, would be in May, in the spring. And again there was success!
Almost all the heroes of Samoilov had a strong, open character. He often played officers with patriotism, courage, courage, high intelligence. Although he had several roles that were already opposed to the usual ones, for example, a university teacher Konstantin Khokhlov from the comedy “To the Black Sea”.
Later, there were other interesting characters - Colonel Alexander Petrovich, French General Pierre Cambron.
He did not forget the theater. From 1968 until the end of his life, Samoilov worked at the Maly Theater, where he was also not offended by interesting roles: Tit Vatutin, the learned Brahmin, Major Vasin, Ignat Gordeev and others. Some performances were filmed. And in the movie he almost stopped acting.
The great actor completed his earthly journey on February 17, 2006.