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Nina IvanovnaActress
Date of Birth: 06.01.1934
Country:  Russia |
Content:
Nina Ivanova - an Unprofessional Actress
Nina Ivanova is an actress and the recipient of the Bronze Medal at the International Film Festival held in Moscow as part of the World Festival of Youth and Students in 1957. Despite not being a professional actress, she made her film debut at the age of ten in Viktor Eysymont's wartime drama "Once Upon a Time There Was a Girl". The film tells the story of two Leningrad girls, Nastya and Katya, who endured the terrifying blockade alongside adults. Nina Ivanova played the role of Nastya, while her co-star was five-year-old Natasha Zashchipina, for whom this film was also a debut.
It should be noted that Nina was a very responsible girl. She excelled in school, and her parents were worried that acting in films could negatively impact her education. However, after the filming was completed, she successfully returned to her normal life. She graduated from school and had no intention of pursuing a career in the film industry. Nina enrolled in medical school, and who knows how her life would have turned out if it hadn't been for a chance encounter.
A Chance Encounter and a New Begining
A fellow student from the All-Russian State Institute of Cinematography offered Nina a role in his short film. It was during the filming of this movie that the director Marlen Khutsiev accidentally noticed her. He was impressed by the young actress and invited her to be part of his new film, "Spring on Zarechnaya Street".
It is worth mentioning that two years earlier, in 1954, a young student of the All-Russian State Institute of Cinematography, Felix Mironer, wrote a one-act play that was later adapted into a screenplay. The romantic love story of a young steelworker and an evening school teacher impressed the management, and it was decided to make a film. Nina Ivanova was given the lead role of Tatyana Sergeevna, the schoolteacher of the youth work school. Nikolai Rybnikov, a 25-year-old actor, played the role of the young steelworker Sasha Savchenko.
Mironer and Khutsiev created a truly vibrant and human film. It is no wonder that it immediately gained popularity among the people, and Nina Ivanova and Nikolai Rybnikov became incredibly popular. Enthusiastic fans from all over the country wrote letters to Nina, offering their hand in marriage. Another interesting detail is that Nina naturally had unruly curls, which she kept for the film. Her fans named this curl near her temple the "curl of passion". Many fashion-conscious women of the late 1950s tried to recreate the same hairstyle, often using heated forks to curl their hair. Perhaps the passionate love between Nina Ivanova and the cinematographer Radomir Vasilyevsky helped create the memorable image of Tatyana Sergeevna. Regardless, the creators of the film remember that "the camera looked at her with admiring eyes".
Immediately after the completion of the film, Vasilyevsky and Ivanova got married and moved to Odessa. "We lived in the same building," recalls Vadim Kostromenko, the director of the Odessa Film Studio museum. "Once I came to visit them: Nina, lying on the floor with her arms outstretched like a bird, while Radik drew her figure with chalk. 'I'm going to make a fashionable pajama for my wife!' I remember feeling envious of their relationship; they had such a spring-like lightness. The intellectual Radik and the smiling, sunny Ninotchka..." It seemed that after such success, the actress was destined for a brilliant career. However, things turned out differently. While Nina Ivanova was offered roles in other movies, none of them reached the level of stardom she achieved with "Spring on Zarechnaya Street". Experts believed that the lack of a strong acting education was to blame, as Nina Ivanova was not a professional actress.
Later Career and Life
Following "Spring on Zarechnaya Street," Ivanova appeared in Timofey Levchuk's trilogy - "Kiev Girl" (parts one and two) and "Heirs". In these films, she played a symbolic role as a girl born on the night of November 7, 1917, and raised alongside the new regime. However, the films were not successful and eventually faded into obscurity.
The same fate befell the melodrama "Love Must Be Treasured" directed by Sergei Sploshnov, released in 1959. Ivanova played the lead role of Toni, a girl accused of dishonesty who decides to leave on a distant construction project.
She then had small roles in Vasily Shukshin's film "There Lived a Guy" (1964), Veniamin Dorman's comedy "Easy Life" (1966), and Yakov Segel's "The Gray Disease" (1966). After starring in "The Gray Disease," Nina Ivanova decided to leave the acting profession. By that time, there were also changes in her personal life. Nina Ivanova divorced her husband. In the mid-1960s, she returned to Moscow and found work as an assistant director at the Gorky Film Studio.
Why their marriage ended, no one knows. Later, Radomir Borisovich Vasilyevsky married twice more. However, he never had children, despite his strong desire to have them.
From the mid-1960s until the late 1980s, Vasilyevsky focused on directing. He directed films such as "Tales of Keshka and His Friends," "Racecourse," "Four - Zero in Favor of Tanechka," and others. His last work, the philosophical fable "The Cossack Who Went in Search of Happiness," won the Hans Christian Andersen Award. Radomir Vasilyevsky passed away in 1999.
Nina Ivanova continued to work as a senior nurse in the oncology department of a hospital near VDNKh. She refuses to meet with journalists and has become a forgotten figure in the entertainment industry. Many believed that she had passed away. In 2001, she was unexpectedly found by television journalist Roman Pobedinsky. Nina Ivanova declined interviews and any assistance. They briefly met near the metro station. "She lives with her sister. Her pension from the actors' guild is only 600 rubles," said Pobedinsky. "There are many forgotten artists like me. There is no need to single me out. What am I famous for?" Her gaze was so sad, like a winter, January gaze. There was nothing left of the spring-like Tatyana Sergeevna, absolutely nothing. It was so painful that I looked away..."
To this day, Nina Georgiyevna continues to work as a nurse in the oncology department of a hospital near VDNKh. She has completely disappeared from public view. The film that made her famous, Nina Georgiyevna has never watched. When it is shown on television, she simply turns off the TV. She has not seen her co-star Nikolai Rybnikov since the filming...
