In the early eighties of the last century, a musical about children appeared on Soviet television screens, which definitely fell out of the cage of conformist children's Soviet films. Those were two two-part movie stories about the adventures of Petrov, Vasechkin and their first love - Masha Startseva. Inga Ilm played a beautiful student in the film.
Childhood dreams
The actress was born on December 22, 1971 in Leningrad. Her parents adored noisy companies, lived, so to speak, in an open house, where the Leningrad creative intelligentsia came. The regulars of these "parties" were the actors of the Lensovet Theater. One of them, admiring Inga, her wide eyes in fluffy eyelashes, advised her parents to give the girl to the cinema, and even volunteered to take her photo to the Lenfilm card file. Inga Ilm herself did not dream about spotlights and the scene, she liked biology, and the girl wanted to follow in the footsteps of her father, a doctor. But fate had other plans on her account.
The happiness of being an actress
Six years after her photo was in the archives of Lenfilm, a telephone call rang in Ilmov’s apartment. The girl was asked one question: how old is she now. Upon learning that Inge was twelve, the voice on the other end became amused: it turned out to be what we needed for filming in the new children's television movie. So Inga Ilm was in the crew of "The Adventures of Petrov and Vasechkin." The film was directed by director Vladimir Alenikov, who got his hand on the cheerful sketches of the Yeralash newsreel. It was 1983, the time of stagnation, the tape, which turned out to be mischievous and dynamic, was almost banned from showing for the "non-pioneering behavior" of the heroes. But the film came out and was a resounding success. And immediately the second, summer part of the sparkling adventures of the restless schoolchildren was filmed - "Vacations of Petrov and Vasechkin, ordinary and incredible." Nastya Ulanova, the girl who later played Anka in the camp, where the heroes came for the holidays, claimed to be the excellent student of Masha Startseva, who won the hearts of inseparable friends. Inga Ilm was approved for the role of Masha thanks to the unanimous choice of her on-screen friends Yegor Druzhinin and Dima Barkov, who became her friends in life.
The tricks on the set, ordinary and incredible
Having never loved excellent pupils, Inga played the most “notorious” good guy that you could imagine. And she studies at five, and everything brilliantly turns out at her, according to the scenario, she even received a medal for saving the drowning. In real life, Inga also did not sit idle, she studied at a dance studio, went to a circle of writers, was a young man, was engaged in horse riding at an Olympic reserve school. At a young age, the girl learned Latin, believing that this should be part of the education of every literate person. The actress remembers the time of the first shootings in her life as a fairy tale. The film was made in Odessa, in the evenings, young artists ran to the pier, bathed, caught mussels and fried them on the fire. Of course, the guys worked hard and learned a lot, but there were a lot of hooligan antics. Inga Ilm now recalls with a smile about how, having pulled a smoke bomb from pyrotechnics, the mischievous people started a fire, and how, having smeared with “cinematic” blood taken from make-up artists, they lay down in crowded places and frightened passers-by. Once the guys got sick, tightly shut in the T-34 tank. They got out of there only thanks to the ingenuity of the boys.
The popularity among young actors was frantic, but she also had a flip side. It’s hard for a child’s psyche to endure when they recognize you everywhere, point fingers at you and envy you. In addition, in two years, while she was an excellent pupil on the screen, Inga turned into a two-year student in her real school.
Acting career and personal life
A further biography of Inga Ilm has been determined. After graduating from high school, the girl entered the Moscow Art Theater School. In one of the interviews, the actress admitted that she achieved success exclusively with her “head”: instead of 1-2 shows, she did 16 each, thinking about how this or that option could turn out. The student’s debut was the role of Nina in the performance of the Moscow Art Theater. Chekhov's "Masquerade". In the years of study, Inga starred in many films. The audience remembered the unpredictable images in the films “You Are”, “Eyes”, “Seagull”, “Host of White Princesses”, “Staircase of Light”. The last of these films made a new turn in the fate of Inga. The tape was filmed by Irish director Gerald Michael Brian McCartney. He was fascinated by the fragile black-eyed actress. After filming the movie, they got married. According to fashionable methods, the young mother gave birth to her son Jason at home in the water.
American impressions
At the end of 1993, the young actress Inga Ilm left for America to study English and master the theater skills at the Lee Strasberg Institute of Theater and Cinema . This acting school, by the way, was once graduated from the famous Dustin Hoffman, Robert De Niro, Angelina Jolie. If at the time of her studies at the Moscow Art Theater School Inge sometimes had to play cards for money to feed herself, now in New York she had to work as a parking lot and as an administrator.
Theatre
The American way of life, where everything is planned to the smallest detail for many years to come, soon became bored with the actress. A year later, she returned to her homeland. The head of the course, with whom the girl studied at the Moscow Art Theater School, the main director of the theater. Pushkin Yuri Eremin, took his graduate to the theater he headed. Here she played Princess Mary in the play "Call Pechorin ..." based on the play by Nina Sadur, Hermia in the production of Shakespeare's play "A Midsummer Night's Dream", and Masha in the play based on Pushkin's novel Dubrovsky.
Together with classmate Yevgeny Pisarev, they staged a magnificent performance based on the works of Salinger, where Inga played 4 roles in different short stories. In 2001, the actress left the stage.
Era of television
Inga has been working as a TV presenter since 1996, she maintained the Hot Ten rating on RTR and worked on the federal TVC channel. With Dmitry Maryanov, she came up with and conducted a program about the theater “I Don't Believe!”, For which she wrote scripts and acted as a journalist and director. Then Inga was the leading on the Moscow independent channel VKT. At the peak of her television career, the actress decided on a nude photo shoot. Candid photos of Inga Ilm appeared in Playboy and in the magazine Om. "Nudity" popularly beloved excellent student Masha Startseva was not forgiven. Inga was denounced and fired. The actress returned to the television studio in 2006 as the leading quiz "Big Brainwomen" on the REN-TV channel.
Literature and Journalism
The next step in the biography of Inga Ilm was the publishing business. In 2003, with her husband, she opened the FBI-press publishing house. In 2008, a young woman published her book about Charles Cameron, a Scottish architect who worked at the court of Catherine II. A year later, the actress became the creator and coordinator of the independent literary award "Neformat" for aspiring authors.
Art and science
In 2010, Inga I. Ilm took up scientific activities, taking part in a conference on provincial noble estates. The start to this was the study at the History Department of Moscow State University, specializing in the artistic culture of Russia in the first half of the eighteenth century.
When Inga Ilm is asked again and again about Masha Startseva from the distant 80s, she sighs: the image of this girl is her "rock". But for millions of fans of the actress, it is obvious: she was even more gifted, interesting and charming than her on-screen heroine from childhood.