Vera Alentova(1942-2025)
- Actress
Vera Alentova is among the most popular Soviet and Russian actresses,
thanks to her wonderful performance in
Vladimir Menshov's internationally
acclaimed
Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears (1980).
Born in 1942 into a family of actors (the apple does not fall far from
the tree!), she naturally started studying drama at the Moscow Theatre
Art Studio once she had graduated from high school. In 1962, aged 20,
she married future director Vladimir Menshov, the man who would make
her world famous eighteen years later. Active in the theater in the
first years of her career (she appeared in a single film in the 1960s),
she turned to television ("Rozhdenie", her first TV movie in 1977) and
the seventh art. Success was awaiting her in the latter medium, thanks
to the role of Katia, a modern free woman, in the already mentioned
Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears (1980)
. Seen by 84,400,000 people in the Soviet Union (wow!), she immediately
became a star in her country. She was also noticed throughout the world
after the film received the Best Foreign Movie Award. Vera Alentova
went on with her career, often playing unsatisfied women coping with
midlife crisis
(Vremya zhelaniy (1984) ;
Zavist bogov (2000)). Unfortunately
her films were little seen outside Russia, so the rest of the world has
been deprived of her talent. Too bad.
