Leonid Kuravlyov

Leonid Vyacheslavovich Kuravlyov (Russian: Леонид Вячеславович Куравлёв) (born October 8, 1936) is a Soviet/Russian actor and People's Artist of the RSFSR (1976).

Leonid Kuravlyov was born in Moscow in 1936. In 1941, Kuravlyov's mother was falsely accused and exiled to the Russian North, where they would spend several years until their return to Moscow. In 1955, Leonid Kuravlyov was accepted to the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography and began studying the art of acting.

Leonid Kuravlyov and Vasily Shukshin

Leonid Kuravlyov made his first appearance in a movie while he was still a student. In 1959 he played in the film There Will Be No Leave Today by his classmate Andrei Tarkovsky. In 1960, he played the role of a sailor Kamushkin in a historical movie Michman Panin (Warrant Officer Panin) directed by Mikhail Shveitzer. Simultaneously, Kuravlyov acted in Vasily Shukshin's degree work Iz Lebyazhyego soobshchayut (They report from Lebyazhiy). That same year, Kuravlyov graduated from VGIK and joined the Theater Studio of Film Actors. From that moment on, Leonid Kuravlyov played a few leading parts and incidental characters in a few movies. In 1961, Kuravlyov and Shukshin starred in a famous Soviet melodrama Kogda derevya byli bolshimi (When the Trees Were Tall) with Yuri Nikulin playing the leading part. Actor and film director Vasily Shukshin is considered to have been the one to widely introduce Leonid Kuravlyov to the general public. In 1964, he shot two films – Zhivyot takoy paren' (There Is Such a Lad) and Vash syn i brat (Your Son and Brother) – both starring Leonid Kuravlyov. Shukshin liked Kuravlyov's acting in these two movies so much that he would constantly offer him different roles in many of his projects. Kuravlyov, however, turned down each one of them because he did not wish to play clichéd characters.