The actor Nikolai Grinko throughout his career has had a great many roles. However, the overwhelming majority of viewers (especially the younger age) remembered him as Professor Gromov from "Adventures of Electronics" or dad Carlo from "Pinocchio". What other roles did the artist play, how did you choose this path for yourself?
Start
Little is known about the early years in the life of Nikolai Grinko. By the way, you should call him Mikola in the right way: after all, this artist is Ukrainian, and this is exactly what the Ukrainian version of the name of Nikolai sounds like.
He was born in the twentieth year of the last century in Ukraine, in a family that was directly related to acting. His father Gregory himself was an artist, his mother worked as an assistant director. From childhood, little Kolya was completely immersed in the amazing atmosphere of creativity, theatrical life, and play. Naturally, he could not help dreaming of a similar field of activity for himself, especially since he had a clear penchant for acting. And Nicholas not only dreamed, but was going to enter the corresponding institute in order to receive the necessary education. However, at that time the dreams of the young man were not destined to come true. The war broke out, and Nikolai Grinko went to the front.
On the roads of World War II
It is hard to say whether Nikolai Grinkorievich Grinko was lucky - after all, he spent all four long war years at the front. Although, on the other hand, he was probably lucky: after all, during all the years of the war, he had never received any really significant wounds. Fate spared him, kept for future roles and for the viewer.
He served in the battalion of airfield services, and, more precisely, was a radio operator on bombers. However, even in this difficult time, Grinko did not forget about his dream of becoming an actor, and again, he certainly had a talent and a predisposition to acting. It was he, and not anyone else, who was a Komsomol in his battalion, conducted active organizational work, was engaged in amateur performances. For this, he was later even awarded a separate medal. And Nikolai Grigoryevich had the rank of foreman, with him he ended the war in nineteen forty-fifth.
New life
After the war, everyone literally began a new life. Our hero was no exception - a blank page appeared in the biography of Nikolai Grinko. And he used this page in order to finally realize his long-standing dream - to do acting. Starting from the forty-sixth year of the last century, Nikolai Grigoryevich, who was then only twenty-six years old, began working in the Zaporizhzhya Drama Theater.
There were a lot of affairs, but there weren’t enough people, and therefore Nikolai performed several functions at once - and managed to play roles as a first minor actor, and then as a presenter, and as an assistant director — a gift that without education, but he helped out a natural gift. However, without education, Grinko did not stay long - only three years later, in the forty-ninth, he graduated from a theater studio at the aforementioned theater.
Further career
Having plunged headlong into the theatrical life, into the world of creativity and acting, Grinko was not going to emerge from there. As he did not intend to initially act in films, or rather, he was not going to, but simply did not think about it, devoting himself entirely to the art of theater. However, as you know, life turned in such a way that Nikolai still got into the cinema ... And this happened in 1951, almost by accident. Grinko then got a very small role in the historical biopic “Taras Shevchenko” (shot by Igor Savchenko). Obviously, Nikolai did quite well, because after the release of the tape he began to receive all new offers.
However, we will return to this conversation a little later. In the meantime, it’s worth saying that since 1955, Grinko has been playing and directing the Kiev pop orchestra called Dnipro. Nikolai Grigoryevich at one time generally spent a lot of time on the stage: he worked as an entertainer, sang humorous couplets, and in general performed all kinds of entertaining numbers to the delight of the Zaporizhzhya audience. But all this was only at the beginning of the acting path. And then a movie happened.
The first roles in the cinema
As already mentioned, the first role of Nikolai Grinko was very tiny, his name is not even in the credits of the picture. After that, the actor did not act for some time, but the new experience inspired him so much that by 1956 Grinko moved to Kiev and became an actor in the Kiev film studio. From this moment, a new round of both the life and work of Nikolai Grigoryevich began.
In the same fifty-sixth year, Grinko appeared on large screens in two films at once - “There is such a guy” and “Pavel Korchagin”. However, both roles were again small. But the first serious role was awaited by Grinko in the sixty-first: in the film "Peace to the incoming" he played an American soldier, so much so that he received a special prize for the Venice Festival for this work - a car. More precisely, he should have received, but "did not grow together."
Talisman of Tarkovsky
Among the films of Nikolai Grinko, a considerable number of those whose authorship belongs to Andrei Tarkovsky. And this is no coincidence: from the very first picture in which Grinko appeared with Tarkovsky (it was the Ivanovo Childhood film, released in 1962), they somehow permeated each other: the director considered Nikolai Grigoryevich his talisman and later invited him to many projects, the same, in turn, immensely respected Tarkovsky and looked forward to the release of each of his new films.
Interestingly, in “Ivan's childhood”, Grinko at first did not want to appear, mistakenly believing that this was an uninteresting idea, but ultimately succumbed to the entreaties of the assistant directors. And succumbing - did not regret it.
In addition to the foregoing
What else was there in Grinko’s stage life besides Tarkovsky’s films? There were the titles of Honored and People's Artist of the Ukrainian SSR (1969 and 1973, respectively), there were more than one hundred and fifty (!) Various paintings. His characters were different, but in the features of each character Grinko introduced his kindness, gentleness, wisdom and charm.
Perhaps he would have played many more roles, and maybe the main role of his whole life, which every artist is waiting for, he never played. The disease prevented everything: Nikolai Grigoryevich died at the age of less than sixty-nine from leukemia. He is buried in Kiev.
Personal life
The personal life of Nikolai Grinko is not full of shocking details that can be savored and which are interesting to the yellow press. He was married twice. The first marriage did not last long, his wife Grinko was an actress of the same Zaporizhzhya Drama Theater, where he played after the war. With his second wife, Aisha, the actor met at the Kiev Orchestra in 1957. Their marriage was quite happy and lasted until the death of the artist. The couple did not have children.
Such was the life and creative fate of a wonderful, talented artist - Nikolai Grinko.