Igor Dmitriev

Honored Artist of the RSFSR (12/10/1963). People’s Artist of the RSFSR (08/15/1988). Academician of the National Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences of Russia. Member of the English Club and the World Club of Petersburgers. The future actor participated in school amateur performances, studied in the pioneer song and dance ensemble of the Leningrad Palace of Pioneers. He made his film debut at the age of 12 – the first role was a Polish high school student in V. Fainberg’s film “The Voice of Taras”. During the Great Patriotic War, together with his mother, he ended up in the city of Molotov (Perm), where they were evacuated along with the Mariinsky Theater and the choreographic school. In 1943 he entered the theater studio at the Perm Drama Theatre, after classes he stayed for performances, played in crowd scenes. In September 1944 he came to Moscow to enter the theater institute. He entered the V.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko at the Moscow Art Theater, in the class of People’s Artists of the USSR Pavel Vladimirovich Massalsky and Sergei Kapitonovich Blinnikov. In 1948 he graduated from the Moscow Art Theater School and was accepted into the troupe of the Leningrad Drama Theater, which now bears the name of Vera Fedorovna Komissarzhevskaya. After leaving the theater, he became an actor at the Lenfilm Film Actor Studio. The first significant film role was Yevgeny Listnitsky in the film Quiet Flows the Don (1957). In addition to the domestic actor, he worked a lot at film studios in Hungary, Poland, the GDR, the USA, Morocco, Algeria. Igor Dmitriev is the author of about 30 TV programs from the cycle “At Igor D…” on television in St. Petersburg. This cycle was awarded the Golden Horse Grand Prix at the Velvet Season international festival. In 1984, Igor Dmitriev was accepted into the troupe of the Leningrad Academic Comedy Theater named after N.P. Akimov, on the stage of which he made his debut in the role of Chinzanov in the play based on the play by Sergei Mikhalkov “Kings Can Do Everything”. The return of the actor to the theater stage was a notable event in the cultural life of Leningrad in 1984. Collaborated with the St. Petersburg Theater “Russian Entreprise” named after Andrei Mironov and played in the play “Talents and Admirers” at the Bolshoi Drama Theater named after G.A. Tovstonogov. Igor Dmitriev revived the genre of melody and, having managed to achieve a true harmony of sound and word, was the only Russian actor who mastered this art. For the anniversary of the actor, the Rossiya TV channel shot a documentary film about the life and work of Igor Dmitriev “People’s Marquis of the Soviet Union” (2007).