Biography

Nadezhda Vasilevna Rumyantseva (sometimes spelled Rumiantseva) was a sort of Russian combination of Gidget + Tammy + Lucille Ball. Rumyantseva first acted on the stage, at Moscow's Central Children's Theater, when she was a teenager in the 1940s. She made her film debut at 22 in "Encountering Life." Her years of great popularity in the USSR came in the late 1950s to the mid-60s, when she starred in a series of teen-age family comedies, "The Unamenables" ('59), "Gals" ('61), "Queen of the Gas Station" ('63), etc., in a couple of which her romantic-comic partner was played by Yuri Belov. After she married a trade representative from the Georgian (Caucasus Mts.) Republic, she retired from acting in Russia for several years, in order to live with her husband abroad. In her comeback as a Russian actress in recent decades, she had to "act her age," no longer the once-beloved cute little teenager, and occasionally she has dubbed voices for animated cartoons.
- IMDb mini biography by: Prof Steven P Hill, Russian & Cinema, University of Illinois (USA).

Nadezhda Rumyantseva was a Russian comedienne and character actress in Soviet comedies The Girls (1962) and Koroleva benzokolonki (1963), and also a dubber in popular Russian cartoons.

She was born Nadezhda Vasilevna Rumyantseva (sometimes spelled Rumiantseva) on September 9, 1930, in Potapovo village, Smolensk province, Soviet Union. She studied acting at the Soviet State Institute of Cinema (VGIK), graduating in 1952 as an actress. While a student, she made her stage debut at the Moscow Central Children's Theatre. Her small height at once determined her type as a travesty.

In 1952 Rumyantseva made her film debut as Marusya Rodnikova in Navstrechu zhizni (1952) by director Nikolay Lebedev. She shot to fame in the Soviet Union with her roles in The Girls (1962) and Koroleva benzokolonki (1963). She also dubbed Natalya Varley in Kidnapping, Caucasian Style (1967), and Audrey Hepburn in a Russian adaptation of How to Steal a Million (1966) for the Soviet market.

Nadezhda Rumyantseva was married to a Soviet diplomat, Villi Khshtoyan, and their daughter, Karina, was born in Malaysia. In the 60s and 70s, Rumyantseva was living outside the Soviet Union, due to the nature of her husband's job. Back in the USSR, Rumyantseva hosted a Soviet TV show for children, and occasionally dubbed voices for animated cartoons.

In 1996 she was attacked by two burglars in her Moscow apartment. One of the burglars hit Rumyantseva in the head, causing her a severe head trauma, and she suffered from headaches for the rest of her life. She died of a brain cancer on April 8, 2008, in a Moscow clinic, and was laid to rest in Vagankovskoe Cemetery in Moscow, Russia.
- IMDb mini biography by: Steve Shelokhonov