Among the famous Russian actresses, one of the most charming and interesting is Elena Sanaeva. Her biography is full of dramatic and vivid events in both cinematic and personal life.
Rising star of cinema
For the first time, a stately beauty with sensual lips and an expressive gaze of large brown eyes appeared on the screen in Zagid Sabitov’s military drama “General Rakhimov”, the next role was the heroine of Maxim Gorky’s early stories in the film “In Russia” by Fyodor Filippov. In the picture of Aida Manasarova “The Main Witness”, created in 1969 based on the stories of A.P. Chekhov, Elena Sanaeva accurately and subtly played the role of passionately in love with the neighbor of the widow Maria Kapluntsova, who is tried for the murder of her husband. The actress at the screenings confirmed the right to this role so convincingly that she immediately pushed all the other applicants away. And it happened so thanks to the wise advice of his father.
Childhood memory
It's no secret that the actress Elena Sanaeva is the daughter of the famous Soviet actor Vsevolod Vasilyevich Sanaev. She was born in the military year of 1943, she was sick a lot and often, but her parents were ready to give their lives in order to leave their only daughter after the death of her two-year-old brother Alyosha. The baby died in evacuation from diphtheria complicated by measles, leaving a deep spiritual wound in the heart of his mother, Lydia Antonovna, forever. The public learned about the difficult and dramatic relationships in the Sanaev family from the story “Bury Me Behind the Baseboard” written by the actress’s son, Pavel. Elena Sanaeva shared some of her memories of childhood and youth in an interview. She talked about how, at the age of five, she became ill with jaundice, which was very difficult to cope with in those years, and her mother selflessly treated her daughter, carried her arms in the fresh air, and finally decided to baptize the girl. The ceremony was carried out at home, over a basin, putting a copper cross on Lena’s pale neck. After that she went on the mend.
The actress remembers her mother and father full of gratitude and warmth. Maybe in those difficult years, Elena Sanaeva learned compassion, patience, the ability to help and support a person. The actress recalls how her mother in 1952, telling a joke in the communal kitchen, was threatened with denunciation and fell ill with a “persecution mania”. Then the woman suffered a depression all her life, which, multiplied by an imperious character and longing for unfulfilled dreams, turned Lidia Antonovna into a domestic tyrant and provoked quarrels with loved ones.
Debuts
When Lena grew up, she entered GITIS. And here the father very much supported the daughter in her creative daring. He repeatedly told her: “We, Sanaevs, are talented people. Believe in yourself, and the case will come - and you will be ready for it. " After the institute, the girl began to play in the Moscow theater studio of a film actor.
Twenty-six-year-old Elena was noticed by Vasily Shukshin. In his film “Strange People”, an acting duet flashed brightly and talented, where Elena Sanaeva and Vsevolod Vasilyevich Sanaev also played a daughter and a father. And then the star family appeared in another Shukshin’s tape - “Stoves and Shops”. Elena often got the supporting roles, but in them she showed such a creative temperament that the directors always saw and noted an extraordinary girl. Nevertheless, the actress Elena Sanaeva, whose biography in the cinema shone with new facets after meeting with Rolan Bykov, was not spoiled for the time being with praise.
Love affair at work
The fateful meeting took place in 1973, on the set of the film "Docker." Rolan Bykov was unhappy with the downtime due to the fact that a certain actress Sanaeva, you see, is afraid to fly on an airplane and travels by train. When Rolan Antonovich saw a capricious stranger, about whom he knew only that she was “father's daughter”, he instantly “fell through” her bottomless eyes. In the film they had to play lovers. After a too reliable kiss, Elena's lips turned red. Bykov was then 43 years old, he just broke up with his first wife, actress Lidia Knyazeva. Elena was thirteen years younger, and she looked even ten years younger. Outwardly, they also do not fit each other: she is tall, thin, he is short and stocky. “Do not mount!” - the father of the actress determined the possibilities of the couple. However, the internal desire for each other, the energy of attraction that arose between these two people, bound them not only in a creative, but also in a life union. A year later, Bykov, kneeling in a Tallinn restaurant (in Estonia the shooting of the film “Car, Violin and Blot Dog” was filming) made a sweetheart proposal.
Personal Facts
The first husband of Elena Sanaeva, engineer Vladimir Konuzin, whom the actress always remembers with respect, gave her a son - Paul. Vladimir's parents were opposed to marrying the actress, the couple did not live together for long - their views and habits were very different. When Rolan Bykov became the chosen one of Lena, for some reason her parents muttered. The nickname "dwarf the bloodsucker", which was awarded to son-in-law Lidia Antonovna, is not only an artistic image from a book written by the son of Elena Sanaeva. The relationship did not go well for a long time, until the strong and purposeful nature of Roland Antonovich could not redirect the situation to a peaceful course. Thanks to Rolan Bykov, the mother-in-law lived three months longer and finally made peace with her daughter. Sincere conversations with the son-in-law brightened up the last year of his life and Vsevolod Sanaev, who left after his wife a few months after her death.
Best Roles
After the wedding, the spouses smiled luck to play a couple of crafty scammers in the movie of Leonid Nechaev's “The Adventures of Pinocchio”. At first, Bykov did not like the idea, but Elena, who was sensitive to acting luck, said that they did not refuse such roles. The duet of the fox Alice and the cat Basilio turned out enchantingly bright. Elena unexpectedly revealed herself as an ostentatious actress. The new roles that followed this tape were often funny and memorable. Sanaeva starred in the films of Roland Bykov. In Moscow, even rumors circulated that the young actress was flattered by this marriage for the sake of a career. Of course, these were nonsense. The talented director Bykov never made roles specifically for her, did not suit her cinematic fate. And one could only dream of such a tender and creatively rich relationship that Bykov and Sanaeva had. In life, for each other, they were support and joy. Elena gave her husband a magnificent alloy of strength of character, gentleness, emotionality and emotional balance. He gave her a reliable support, many bright moments of creativity, spiritual generosity with which he unselfishly helped many confused people, shared with her the genius of a rare gift to understand children and feel responsibility for the future.
Fictional book
The story "Bury Me Behind the Baseboard" delighted Rolan Bykov. This was exactly the combination of sincerity and artistry that the famous director and actor wanted to see in the writer. The children's torment and suffering experienced by little Sasha Savelyev (the prototype of the author, Pavel Sanaev) is woven into the intrigue of relations with his mother, to whom her grandmother did not allow her grandson for a long time, and with her stepfather, who at first the boy was terribly afraid and jealous of. When, at the insistence of Roland Antonovich, Pasha was finally taken away from his grandparents, a new streak began in his life. The guy did not become a “notorious neurotic,” he said, largely due to the wisdom of his stepfather. He managed to establish relations with the boy and instill in him a taste for creative work.
Life without Roland
1996 was marked by a terrible diagnosis, which was put to Rolan Bykov. Doctors found a cancer in his lungs and had surgery. But two years later, Bykov was again in a hospital bed and knew that he could no longer survive. In October 1998, he died. It is hard to imagine how Elena Sanaeva survived the tragedy. The biography of the honored artist forever changed with the departure of a close friend and reverently beloved person. But this test did not break the woman. Until his last breath, Roland courageously endured pain, and Elena did everything imaginable and inconceivable to push the terrible end. And then she, having gathered strength, began to continue the work, which her husband did not finish . She was engaged in its archives, continued to work on materials for the documentary film “The Gospel of Buffoon”, which Rolan Antonovich conceived and did not have time to carry out. Viewers saw two documentary films that Elena Vsevolodovna Sanaeva shot as a director: “The Work of My Life” about the photographer Yuri Rost and “It's Hard to Be German” about the film director Alexei German.
Theatrical gift
In 2007, Elena Sanaeva starred in her son Paul’s film “Zero Kilometer”, for this excellently played episodic role, the actress claimed the award for the Constellation film festival.
Then there were a few more roles in the movie, but the most interesting was the fact that the actress returned to the theatrical stage, from which she began her creative biography. Here she plays in the plays of the most talented modern playwrights - Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Dmitry Bykov, Evgeny Grishkovets.
Joseph Reichelgauz, director of the School of Modern Play theater, where the actress works, speaks of her as a very informative person, for whom, when she goes on stage, the text is no longer important. It is unusually interesting in itself: how it holds, thinks, talks. Colleagues feel around her a special aura of warmth and talent, and also - the always invisible presence of Rolan Bykov, the spirit of his era. The gift to live in two times is what the magnificent actress Elena Sanaeva perfectly owns. Photos of her first roles and illustrations of contemporary works inspire that special charge of artistic excitement that this strong, wise and beautiful woman possesses.