Nikolay Cherkasov

Nikolai Cherkasov
Cherkasov in Alexander Nevsky, 1938
Born	(1903-07-27)27 July 1903 Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire
Died	14 September 1966(1966-09-14) (aged 63) Leningrad, Soviet Union
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1918–1965

Nikolay Konstantinovich Cherkasov (Template:Lang-ru; 27 July [O.S. 14 July] 1903 – 14 September 1966), was a Soviet actor and a People's Artist of the Soviet Union.

Career

He was born in Saint Petersburg (later Petrograd and Leningrad; it reverted to Saint Petersburg some years after his death). From 1919 he was a mime artist in Petrograd's Maryinsky Theatre, the Bolshoi Theatre, and elsewhere. After graduating from the Institute of Stage Arts in 1926, he began acting in the Young Spectator's Theatre in Leningrad.

Cherkasov was one of Stalin's favorite actors and played title roles in Sergei Eisenstein's monumental sound films Alexander Nevsky (1938) and Parts I & II of Ivan the Terrible (1945 & 1946; though Part II was not officially released until 1958 for political reasons). He also played Jacques Paganel in the memorable 1936 adaptation of Jules Verne's The Children of Captain Grant. In the 1947 comedy Springtime Cherkasov appeared alongside other icons of Stalinist cinema, Lyubov Orlova and Faina Ranevskaya. For the role of Alexander Popov in the film Alexander Popov in 1951 he received a Stalin Prize of the second degree. In 1957 Cherkasov portrayed Don Quixote in director Grigori Kozintsev's screen adaptation of that novel.

In 1941, Cherkasov was awarded the Stalin Prize; in 1947, he was named a People's Artist of the Soviet Union. He wrote his memoirs, "Notes of a Soviet Actor" in 1951. He died in Leningrad in 1966 and was buried in the Cemetery of Masters at that city's Alexander Nevsky Lavra.

The image of Cherkasov in the role of Alexander Nevsky is on the Soviet Order of Alexander Nevsky, because there are no known lifetime portraits of Nevsky.

Selected filmography

Year	Film	Role	Notes
1936	Girl Friends	White army Officer
1936	The Children of Captain Grant	Jacques Paganel
1937	Pyotr Pervyy	Alexei Petrovich, Tsarevich of Russia
1938	Treasure Island	Billy Bonns
1938	Friends	Beta the Ossesian
1938	Alexander Nevsky	Alexander Nevsky
1939	Lenin in 1918	Maxim Gorky
1944	Ivan the Terrible	Ivan the Terrible
1947	Pirogov
1946	In the Name of Life
1949	Alexander Popov	Alexander Popov
1949	Ivan Pavlov	Maxim Gorky
1949	The Battle of Stalingrad	Franklin D. Roosevelt
1952	Rimsky-Korsakov	Stasov
1957	Don Quixote	Don Quixote

External links

• Nikolay Cherkasov at IMDb