In a leap year 1948, on the last day of February, the future actress was born - Irina Kupchenko. The biography of her life began in Austria in the city of Vienna, where her father then served. Since morals in that country were simpler than in the Soviet Union, the girl’s mother managed to write down the date of her birth on March 1.
Irina’s childhood passed, like all military children. They constantly moved from one garrison to another, until they finally settled in Kiev. He is the actress and considers the city of his childhood.
Once she enrolled in a theater circle in the pioneer palace and after it began to go to the circle of cameramen. In addition, she began to dance and was already dreaming of a ballerina career. But can there be a biography of Irina Kupchenko connected with the scene? After all, she is the daughter of a military man and an English teacher, of course, the girl could not even think in order to disobey her parents.
In 1965, Irina graduated from high school and entered the university in the department of foreign languages. But a year later, she finally became convinced that she was not in her place, and could no longer continue like this. She left her studies at the university. Who knows how the biography of Irina Kupchenko would have developed in the future if a series of deaths had not followed in their family. First dad died, and then grandparents. Mom decided to go to relatives in Moscow, and soon Ira followed her. Now she has the opportunity to fulfill her dream - she enters the Shchukin Theater School.
The biography of Irina Kupchenko as a film actress began back in school. Together with her classmates, she decided to earn some extra money at Mosfilm. At that time, director Konchalovsky began work on a new film and for one of the main roles, he was looking for an actress with a harmonious and whole nature. That is what he saw in Irina, and she played Lisa Kalitina in Noble Nest. This was followed by the role of Sonya in the film "Uncle Vanya" (1970), all with the same filmmaker. And in 1974, Konchalovsky removes “Romance of Lovers”, where Irina plays the wife of the protagonist. Irina Petrovna recalls her collaboration with this director with warmth, since he always knew how to work with artists: he will tell, explain, set up, and prepare.
The first main role of the actress appeared in the film “Foreign Letters” (directed by Averbukh), where she played a defenseless and vulnerable teacher Vera Ivanovna. In general, in the future, the biography of Irina Kupchenko and the roles of women with difficult characters seem to be a single whole.
This is the princess from the “Star of captivating happiness” (1975), and Zhenya Shevelkova from “The Strange Woman” (1977), and a small role in the film “Holidays in September” (1979), and Beryl Stapleton in “The Hound of the Baskervilles” (1981). But she also had work in comedy films. It is enough to recall the wife of the wizard from “Ordinary Miracle”, the heroine of Ryazanov’s comedy “Old Nags”.
If we talk about the theatrical career of Irina Kupchenko, then this is the Vakhtangov Theater, in which she came immediately after graduation. She has been faithful to him for over 30 years and even forgives the fact that for all this time she will have only a dozen roles. Although, perhaps, it was her underemployment in her native theater that allowed her to accept invitations “from the outside”. She collaborated with A. Zhitkin (“Free Love”), with P. Stein (“Hamlet”) and so on.
A successful actress and a happy woman considers herself Irina Kupchenko. Biography, family, work of the actress - everything is connected with the cinema and theater. For over 30 years she has been married to Vasily Lanov, who is also an actor in the Vakhtangov Theater. They had two sons: Alexander and Sergey. And if we talk about the most cherished desire of Irina Petrovna, then this is a bit of free time to calmly re-read ancient Greek historians and the Iliad.