Three Husbands and No Children: The 'Long Road in the Dunes' of Lyudmila Chursina Has Come to an End 0 15

In Cinema and in Life

The death of Chursina was announced by the Moscow Theater of the Russian Army, where she worked. She was 84 years old.

By the way, the actress had Baltic roots through her mother. Throughout her life, she was closely connected with Latvia: she often toured and acted in films.

In 1981, she starred in the legendary series "The Long Road in the Dunes," where in the sixth and seventh episodes she played a Russian beauty in Siberia, where the main character Marta was exiled. Tough, resilient, waiting for her husband who went missing in the war (and she did wait for him for years!). She was the same in life - and now it is not appropriate to recall her unacceptable public stance. And the fact that she was married to the son of the all-powerful General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Yuri Andropov (by the way, she married that son after the death of the head of state, during the perestroika times).

For an Hour and Forever

In 2008, Chursina toured in Riga, where she played astonishingly alongside Georgy Taratorkin in Yukio Mishima's play "The Most Expensive Thing is Free." Interestingly, Nelly Uvarova, who starred in the series "My Fair Nanny" and became a star for six months, also acted in that production, and people lined up for interviews with her.

Lyudmila Alexeyevna was accessible and calmly agreed to pose for a fashion magazine where I worked at the time for the Dress-code section, and at nearly seventy years old, she raised her leg almost to 90 degrees (she practiced ballet).

And who remembers Uvarova now? Chursina will be remembered by millions for many years.

How Stars Dressed

If you had met Chursina on the streets of Riga that day, you would not have recognized her. In fact, this People's Artist of the USSR dressed "casually":

"I am just passing through, on tour, not at a festival or a presidential reception... In life, I hardly ever adorn myself. I get enough of that in the theater, and in life, it’s better to stay away from it.

For example, on stage, I can walk in 12-centimeter heels. But these ordinary shoes, bought not far from my home, are very comfortable. I always take jeans when I go on a trip. It looks sporty, as I am quite active. I practiced yoga and dance. The jacket is yellow with patterns from some foreign company – I think it’s Italian. Today you can buy everything that is sold in the world, from various companies! Not a country, but a real costume shop!..."

"Fashion is Breed and Style"

A purple blouse? "Bought in a Moscow boutique, we have many of them now. I saw that this item not only suits me - it goes with me... Over many years of working in theater and film, I have met hundreds of stylists and makeup artists, but I have never sought their advice. Fashion is primarily a feeling and knowledge of what suits you and what goes with you. Fashion is breed and style...

And the watch is silver and not Swiss. These watches do not shout about me, but they slightly "shade" my persona."

Yes, and there was a silver ring with a mysterious semi-precious stone. "I won’t say under what circumstances I bought the ring. I got it many years ago on a trip. At that time, I first put on the ring and, just to occupy my hands, rubbed my fingers on its smooth surface and... Do you see, it shone green? My talisman.

It is associated with many stories. I live on the tenth floor. Once I was in a hurry to an important meeting, got into the elevator... And I remembered that I forgot the ring. I returned home, took the ring, and when I was back at the elevator, it turned out that it was stuck. Moreover, it later turned out that for ten hours, no one came to fix the elevator. If it weren't for the ring, I could have screamed in the elevator for ten hours..."

A Magical Hairpin and a Home Turban

And finally, a hairpin. An ordinary hairpin that you can buy in the simplest little shop. In fact, if you had seen Lyudmila Chursina's hair down, you would have gasped: "A queen!" But thanks to the hairpin - she looked like an ordinary passerby...

By the way, do you remember her role as the Queen in "The Tale of How Tsar Peter Married the Avar"? Most of this film was shot at the mouth of the Latvian river Lielupe, in scenes of shipbuilding.

In what outfit was Lyudmila Chursina truly herself? The actress herself answered this question: "I was recently on the set of the film 'Hold Me Tight,' where I played the owner of a dance school. The costume designers could not find a number of necessary outfits for me for a long time. So I brought them from my home, including the turban, which I brought from one of my foreign trips...".

And a couple of years later, Chursina appeared again in Riga on tour - they showed the play "An Ideal Husband"...

Appearance and Temperament

The actress died "after a prolonged illness." She will not be forgotten thanks to the films "The Gloomy River," "Don Story," and more than 110 film works. The character she played in the film "Two Tickets for a Daytime Session," Inka, an Estonian connected with crime as a "fallen woman," provoked the positive hero Alexander Zbruev with the words: "I am Marilyn Monroe, I have the same bra size, got it?" As critic Andrei Plakhov says, "Monroe is not Monroe, but she could easily compete with Claudia Cardinale in appearance and temperament.

But she preferred to embody the conservative beauty of Russian peasant women. For her role in 'The Crane,' she received the Best Actress award at the San Sebastián festival from Audrey Hepburn."

Chursina died childless, giving all her strength until the end to her grandniece Nastya, who has been ill since childhood. Close ones say that Chursina could no longer speak – she only moved her lips and began to cough terribly. Eternal memory!

And That’s All About Her

Lyudmila Chursina was born on July 20, 1941, in a medical battalion near the village of Gruzdovo, where her mother ended up during childbirth, leaving the city of Velikiye Luki during the advance of the German fascist troops. The day after giving birth, her mother and her newborn daughter went into evacuation to Stalinhabad (Tajikistan).

On the way, the refugees were bombed by German aviation, during which Lyudmila went missing. When the air raids stopped, her mother heard the cry of her miraculously surviving daughter in a devastated potato field.

Only after arriving in Stalinhabad was the fact of Lyudmila Chursina's birth officially registered. Her father was Alexey Fyodorovich Chursin (1915–2006), a career military man; her mother was Genovefa Ivanovna (1921–2013), a medical worker. Her parents lived together for sixty-one years.

In childhood, she dreamed of becoming a ballerina. After graduating from high school with a gold medal, she left in 1959 to enroll in the Moscow Aviation Institute (MAI). However, unexpectedly for herself, before the exams at MAI, she "enrolled for company with a friend" at the B.V. Shchukin Theatre Institute.

As a student, she made her film debut, playing the role of Zoya in the film "When the Trees Were Tall" (1961). Since 1965, she was an actress at the Lenfilm studio. Over many years of creative activity, she played more than a hundred roles in films and television series.

Her first husband (they were married for seventeen years) was Vladimir Fetin (1925–1981), a film director and Honored Artist of the RSFSR.

Her second husband (they were married for two years) was Vladimir Zalitis, an oceanologist.

Her third husband (they were married for four years) was Igor Andropov (1941–2006), a diplomat.

She had no children.