Yelena Yakovleva: "I am a very old-fashioned person and I love the time when the theater was a theater"

"Thank you so much. It is very pleasant that in our difficult time you remembered about my birthday. I'm fine - I feel good, I work", - Yelena Alekseyevna modestly answered our phone call.

The actress was invited to the play "Paper marriage" at the Pushkin Theater, where she plays with Sergei Makovetsky. Yakovleva and Makovetsky first met on the same stage in the play Pygmalion by Galina Volchek, where he played Professor Higgins, and she played Eliza Doolittle. Sergey Vasiliyevich continues to play this role in Sovremennik, and Yelena Yakovleva left her native theater partly because of the young heroines:

"It's wrong to play 18-year-old Eliza at 50, and I have repeatedly told Galina Borisovna Volchek about this. But Galina Borisovna believed that the actress had no age on stage, but I think otherwise. I do not like to deceive the audience even in innocent things", - Yelena Yakovleva told Novye Izvestia.

The actress returned to the Sovremennik Theater for the role of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, in Rimas Tuminas' play “We Play, Schiller!”. On March 16, she will once again take the stage as Mary Stuart:

"I really missed Mary Stuart. When Galina Borisovna asked me to return to this production, because Chulpan Khamatova was on vacation, I agreed", - Yelena Yakovleva told Novye Izvestia.

Yelena Yakovleva's Maria Stewart is romantic, cocky, passionate and very feminine. Yelena Yakovleva endows even the most radical heroines, like Tanya Zaitseva in Peter Todorovsky's film "Intergirl", with femininity and tenderness. Yelena Alekseyevna recalls the role of a currency prostitute in the film "Intergirl" with warmth:

"Peter Todorovsky taught me fearlessness in the profession. Thanks to him, I stopped being afraid of the camera", - admitted Yelena Yakovleva.

The film "Intergirl" brought the actress crazy success. She became the most popular actress of the early 90s. But Yelena Yakovleva herself prefers another masterpiece by Peter Todorovsky "Anchor, another anchor!", Where she created the image serviceman's wife Ani:

"Anya is one of my favorite roles. My dad is an officer, and I know the life of the military well”, - the actress admitted.

After graduating from high school in Kharkov, Yelena Yakovleva immediately entered GITIS, on the course of Professor Vladimir Andreyev. Yakovleva was Andreev's favorite student (last year Vladimir Alekseyevich passed away). He always spoke about her with love:

"By nature, Lena is an incredibly modest, shy person. At the entrance exams, she read Katyusha Maslova's monologue from Leo Tolstoy's Resurrection, and I could not take my eyes off her. I understood that she would have to work hard in order to overcome shyness, but there was so much truth, faith, desire in her that I immediately decided to take her on my course", - Vladimir Andreyev said in our interview with him.

Yelena Yakovleva has no social media accounts. For a long time, she did not know how to use the Internet at all. Now they send her scripts to her son's mail Denis Shalnykh. She has no press secretary, no agent. Yelena herself explains it this way:

"I am a very old-fashioned person. I do not like to read books in electronic form, I do not like to read emails, SMS messages. I like the old world, where the book was a book, live communication - live communication, theater - theater", - Yelena admitted.

But in the movies, she is ready to experiment. At the beginning of this year, the film "The Last Bogatyr" by Dmitry Dyachenko was released, where Yelena Yakovleva played Baba Yaga. The director asked the actress to "add anger to her character". To which Yelena replied:

- I'm working on it.

She turned out to be evil in Inessa Seleznyova's film “Raising Cruelty in Women and Dogs”. Her heroine, faced with violence, becomes very strong and merciless towards those who mock animals. This picture means a lot in the life of the actress, because after it she took dogs from the shelter. But the most favorite picture of Yelena Yakovleva with her participation is "Flight of a Bird" directed by Vladimir Grigoriyev:

- It is a pity that not all viewers watched the outstanding film by Vladimir Grigoriev "The Flight of the Bird". The film is about the fate of a talented girl, a woman who could become a great actress, but did not become due to certain circumstances, - Yelena Yakovleva told Novye Izvestia.

Her heroine Leka says to her cavalier - photographer (Rodion Nakhapetov):

"The most real art is cinema!"

If it were not for the film by Mikhail Schweitzer "Resurrection" based on the novel by Tolstoy, there would be no actress Yelena Yakovleva:

"I had no thoughts of becoming an actress until I saw the film "Resurrection" with Tamara Semina as Katyusha Maslova. Her performance made such a strong impression that I decided to enter the theater", - admitted Yelena Yakovleva.

Today Vladimir Putin congratulated People's Artist of Russia Yelena Yakovleva on her birthday.

Angelica Zaozerskaya