Mironov, Yevgeny, born 1966 in Saratov, Russia. Appeared in over 30 film and stage productions (A Common Story, The Oresteia, Love, Limita, Encore Again!). Awards and honors: Too many to count.

"Any farther out of this world and he'd be in deep space", said director Peter Stein when he saw Zhenya Mironov's Orestes after The Oresteia's European tour.

Many people today see it that way. Zhenya Mironov is loved not only for what he has already achieved – as extraordinary as that is – but for the glimpses of his future. To imagine that future in all its glory is difficult, because every new work by Mironov is defiantly unlike the one preceding it. Such a meteoric, magnificent and entirely merited rise has not been seen on our stage or screen for some time. There is hardly another contender for the title of number-one actor of his – our – generation. If the absolute success of Love could have been ascribed to a lucky confluence of character, director, timing, the constellations and whatnot, his roles in Limita, Moslem, Encore Again! and amazing performances at the Tabakov Theater have laid all doubts to rest. People go to see Mironov. People watch him with bated breath. He is an actor of rare magnetism, overwhelming presence, and a capacity for transformation so complete – even while we speak he takes on different characters – that all talk of Russia's lack of artistic future suddenly sounds like childish prattle. Our future is sitting across from me. My colleagues, get an interview with Mironov while he's still giving them! Soon you'll be trying to catch him in the air between Venice and Cannes, intercepting him between shows and shootings, pulling him by the arm out of a mob of fans.

— You're just back from Paris, is that right?

— Yeah, from doing The Oresteia. It was amazingly well received. I thought the French were all just theater freaks, but then I went to see a show by a famous American director: no, not the same reaction. It's Stein that attracts them, and the Russians, and Aeschylus is no small fry.

— So what is responsible for the local near-flop?

— I can tell you for a fact. Not enough time. Russians don't rehearse like that – three months for an eight-hour show, which is really three separate shows. Stein came here basically to reprise the production he put up at his own German theater, which has since been disbanded. But us, we'd never dealt with Aeschylus before. We finally got it right just now, after a year-long run in Moscow, Edinburg, Rotterdam... It's not just a cut above what we'd opened with, it's an entirely different show. They'd come down on us big time in Moscow, it was a huge pain. Before that, all I'd heard was praise, now they'd decided to cut me down to size. It was like, get off your high horse, pal, we're gonna fix you. I was in tears. They weren't just knocking me, they were out to destroy me. There was this one critic whose name I'll never forget...

— But you can't tell me what it is, of course.

— Sure I can, why not? It was Goulchenko. It's burned itself into my memory. The Oresteia has had 99 performances. Stein has seen the last few runthroughs, and I think he's pleased.

— The best actors from Tabakov's studio are now becoming stars: yourself, Vladimir Mashkov, Vitaly Yegorov, Sergey Belyaev. Is it true that all of you were "made" by Tabakov, that he is a total theatrical dictator who conditions and controls his people?

— First of all, I see no other realistic way to run a theater today. Otherwise the whole thing would fall apart. Secondly, it's Tabakov that somehow manages to keep the Studio afloat: we get no subsidies but he finds sponsors, he's made arrangements with Inkombank. And even though he does lose people to the movies, which pay a lot more, but our theater is alive and well. I couldn't survive on the money I make there, but I could never just leave either. I can't tell you that Tabakov was thrilled with my being gone for almost a year, but they say I'm crafty that way (fixes his scarf and turns crafty). So far I've been able to get away with it. Then, too, I haven't skipped a single Studio performance while The Oresteia was playing in Moscow.

— You've just played a small part in Nikita Mikhalkov's Burnt by the Sun. How do you like working with him?

— It was a pretty funny story. He sang like a nightingale, describing the part to me – well, you have to hear him talk. That only an actor of my caliber is able to go from tears to laughter and back again like that, that it's a key episode, that no one else could do it justice... I've never had bit parts, I've been lucky enough to get leads. All right, I figured I'd take a look – he got me curious about this magic part. So I'm reading the script, and there's, like, two lines of dialogue. But he still talked me into it. I've just seen the picture in Paris, it's a pretty funny scene. And for some reason it's in all the trailers. People are calling me, asking – wow, do you have the lead? Before the picture came out in Russia I kept mysteriously silent. Working with Mikhalkov is great, except we'd both lost our voices after that scene. From being nervous and from all the yelling. As a director, Mikhalkov has one problem – he can't stop. He has an excess of talent. Huge chunks of great stuff were left in the cutting room. He keeps coming up with new ideas on impulse, no one in the group can keep up with him.

— And what's the story with Khotinenko's Moslem? It's not even out yet, but rumors abound.

— That's right, no release date yet. ADR is planned for late November. I've had good luck with directors, thank God, I really can't complain. And with good people in general. Otherwise Love would be it as far as my serious roles go. Even in Encore... my part is feather-light, and that's what I love about it. I hope to play a Khlestakov like that someday. But I have to say I've invested a lot of myself into Moslem. A whole lot. I'm not going to go into it, but it's based on a script by Valery Zalotukha about a kid who comes back from Afghanistan, where he was a POW and converted to Islam. Volodya Khotinenko knows how to bring together really cool people – Nina Usatova, Yevdokiya Ghermanova, Sasha Baluyev, Lyosha Rodionov is our cinematographer...

— People say that in real life you're pretty intense, impulsive and tend to go to extremes. Is that so?

— I bet that's just one person's description. I don't know what I'm like, but I hope I have many different sides. Though there are things that can make me lose it, sure. I heard recently that some assholes put up an ad – "We cure cancer" – collected money from cancer victims, and disappeared. I'd like to kill them with my bare hands.

— Are you capable of hitting somebody?

— I was thinking of that in Paris. I was really tempted to hit a guy, it's a good thing my friends held me back. Yeah, I think I could now.

— What did he do, the guy in Paris?

— He had it coming, believe me...

— Are you still living at the dorm?

— Yeah, with my whole family. My sister Oksana is here in Moscow, she's a ballet dancer, and my mom and dad work at my theater. On the one hand, it's hard not having a home of your own, though something finally seems to be stirring in that area. On the other hand, there's a certain charm to living in a dorm. Many of our actors live there.

— You're from Saratov, right?

— Right. I went to the Saratov Theater School and studied under Valentina Yermakova – she's a local theater legend. And then I came here to read for Tabakov and he took me on as a second-year student.

— Why did your whole family move here?

— This isn't an easy time to be living apart. And there isn't a lot of it – time, I mean. And it goes by so fast. It would have been difficult to visit often, and we can't be without one another for too long.

— Was Love your first big role?

— No, I had already done The Kerosene Seller's Wife for Kaydanovsky and Yaropolk Lapshin's film Before the Dawn, which hardly anyone has seen. And at the Studio I was in Tabakov's Biloxi Blues and Avangard Leontyev's Gotcha, both leads. Those two had put me to the task right away: it was like, let's see if you can take it, kid. It was really helpful.

— Is there a difference in the approaches of Todorovsky Senior and Junior?

— Only in their ages.

— They say that Valera Todorovsky is terribly demanding on the set, but in everyday life he's really tolerant.

— That's true. I would even say, talleyrant*. And that's a good thing. Valera is a great guy, and I love working with him – I hope he casts me again. Anybody can be pushed over the limit, of course... but overall, we got along.

— Is it true that the famous train scene, where you're screaming at Natasha Petrova, was completely improvised?

— A complete nightmare is what it was. I was running a fever of 102. I was sitting in the makeup chair half-delirious, making up the lines. I did the scene, they shot it in one take, and I just conked out. Came out of it at home.

— Could you really treat a girl that way?

— No, Natasha was the first who got that sort of treatment. Actually, something like my story in Love had happened to me in real life. I was in love with a Jewish girl by the same name, Masha, and now she lives in Israel. And there were certain similarities with my character: I'm a small-town boy from a working-class family, the guy next door. After Love, there was a big risk of repeating myself. First of all, I won all those awards, including foreign ones, which meant money. On the one hand it's nice, but on the other it's tempting to rest on your laurels. Thank God my work keeps me in shape: I flew back in from Paris two days ago, and yesterday the Studio opened its new season with A Common Story, which I'm in. And secondly, I have no intentions of being typecast, so in Limita I'd set out to be unrecognizable. I tried playing a Jew. I think Russian actors should always play Jews, and Jewish ones should play Russians. Otherwise it's no fun.

— Have you ever had occasion to act in real life, to use what you've learned?

— I used to get that urge once in a while, to make like somebody important. These days I do enough acting onstage and in the movies. I no longer have to prove to anybody that I'm Zhenya Mironov who can act. Only to myself.

— Which of the actors of your generation do you relate to?

— I wouldn't say "relate", but a benchmark of sorts for me is Oleg Menshikov. I think we qualify as the same generation: I'm 27, he's 32. We get together sometimes, and I hope the interest is mutual. I could name many others, ours is a wonderful generation. No weaker than the 60's crop. If they don't mow us down, we'll come up roses. You see, the legends are passing away now. And we're next in line, because there is no middle generation.

— You're always playing people that can't hold their liquor. How are you in that department?

— I'll be honest, I get drunk pretty fast. One shot, and I'm good. Two shots, and I'm great. After that it turns bad. Gotta stop, or else it's a hurricane.

— Has that happened?

— Hurricanes? Systematically.

— Ever try drugs?

— Uh-huh. I smoked hash once. Really enjoyed it.

— Seriously?

— Not in the sense of getting hooked on it, no. New sensations. I'm a novelty freak. Now I know how to play an addict. Hash is the "in" thing in the West right now: there's no smell to it and you walk straight, unless you're stoned out of you head. You smoke some of that shit (fixes his scarf and turns squeamish) and you start getting a kick out of things. Things that you'd normally never pay attention to. Here's a pack of cigarettes, and wow, it's got four corners, and you glimpse the whole thing at once – who made it and who it belongs to. In a second, a million bits of new information flashes through your brain. I tried it in Rotterdam, they have this really pretty lake there. I'm walking along the shore smoking a joint, and there's a shoal of fish in the water. If I'd been straight I would have thought, that's awesome – and walked on. But now I see – oh, there's the leader, and those guys bringing up the rear are the dregs of society. It's a nice thrill, but there's something phony about it. I could have come up with all those ideas without getting buzzed, if I'd just thought about it for a while. It's a bit of a fraud, you know?

— Do you know about life?

— Judging from the fact that meanness and deception can still take me by surprise and that I'm yet to grasp the full extent of human shamelessness – no, I don't. Knowing about life is supposed to be knowing the worst about it, right? In that sense, no.

— Do you know yourself?

— No.

— How do you feel about the "New Russians"?

— Who's that? If you mean the guys in long black coats who drive a Mercedes, step out with hot babes and throw big bucks around in a nightclub – I've been there, it's boring, and those are not the New Russians.

— So who is?

— I am, I think. I'm new. I'm Russian.

— Remarkably Russian, according to the press. What is a Russian, to you?

— I don't know, but I have a general sense. Someone that may be called "a big Russian swine" or "a big Russian heart" with equal justification. Something between a swine and a heart, like a dog and a wolf. With a cry of "Mother***ers!", a Russian can just as easily commit an act of foul debauchery as a great heroic deed (fixes his scarf and turns Russian).

— Is there any part you couldn't play?

— (Lowers his voice, glances around.) I know it sounds monstrous, but...

— What?

— NO.

*A reference to Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (1754-1838), widely regarded as one of the most versatile and influential diplomats in European history, known since the turn of the 19th century simply by the name Talleyrand. Today, the phrase "he is a Talleyrand" is used to denote a person of great diplomatic resource and skill. – Courtesy of en.wikipedia.org


[Translated by Vlada Chernomordik for the Yevgeny Mironov Official Website]