Strong and proud Natalia Gundareva

Before the performance, in no case should one appear before the strong and proud Natalya Gundareva with an empty bucket! She came to the theater before the other actors and before going to the play went down to the stage to hear the "noise of the hall."

In another way, she could not, did not know how, did not want to exist in the theater. "If the performance does not take away part of my life, it does not make any sense to me," the actress recalled.

Strong and proud Natalia Gundareva always played at the limit of the possible, and when the performance ended, I sometimes thought that I would die now. This was an eerie state. I'm glad that after us nothing remains material, only legends - it should be so.


What roles were played by Natalia Gundareva, she was really experienced by her, brought by her personality, and what was invented, brilliantly played by a talented actress? Try, figure it out ...

Twilight Sg.

The famous role of Natalia Gundareva from the film "Truffaldino from Bergamo" - one of the few comedies in her arsenal. Merry laughter Smeraldin, a mischievous with a famous Gundarev's smile - when you see how an actress famously dances together with Konstantin Raikin (classmate, by the way), you do not even notice her completeness, she is so plastic and flexible in her movements. And yet, this very fullness was the eternal complex of Gundareva.


Natasha was "sick" in the theater when she was young, when she got to the famous Mkhatov play "Blue Bird". "I did not know if I should walk on the floor or fly!" - she recalled. And immediately decided that she wanted to play on stage. While, of course, school. But the role she got "adult"

- Mom in the play "Wild Dog Dingo". Incidentally, its texture. But, despite its natural fullness, Natasha tried to compensate for her physical activity - signed up for a basketball team, went skiing. And later, already in the theatrical school, she was engaged in dances, plastic arts, scenic movement. Therefore, Gundareva, of course, Smeraldina ... But at the same time, the image of the carefree giggle remained only an image. In the depths of her soul Natalia Georgievna was completely different - calm, thoughtful, sensible.

When Andrey Goncharov, the director of the Mayakovsky Theater, where Natalia Gundareva worked all her life, crossed the threshold of her house for the first time, he was extremely surprised. Goncharov was sure that Natalia Georgievna was 100% Smeraldin, and in her apartment there were rivets, mirrors, napkins, pink curtains. And she loved the twilight, the muted light, the silence (apparently, the light and colors she had in the profession) ... Such an entourage Goncharov could not connect with Gundareva. After this visit, he changed the opinion of his beloved actress and began to call her "a twilight woman."


"Hello and goodbye"

The barmaid Nadia in this film is the debut of the powerful and proud Natalia Gundareva in the cinema. Her partner was Viktor Pavlov - a childhood friend and "godfather" in the profession. Natasha, although she played in the school theater, but chose a profession the same as her mother - a design engineer: on the family council it was decided that the theater, of course, is good, but all this art is a whim. So Natasha stopped at the Moscow Engineering and Construction Institute. To enroll there, she moved to evening school, and in the daytime she worked in the design bureau, earned an experience - without him they did not take to university. She already passed the exams in engineering and construction, when Vitya Pavlov came to visit her. "Natasha, is it true that you are doing construction work? he asked from the threshold. - Lost her mind! Immediately carry the documents to us, at the Shchukin school! "

Competition in the school was incredible - 247 people per seat. Natalia Gundareva has successfully passed two rounds, and on the third has decided to appear before members of the selection committee in all its glory. She put on a pink dress in blue, curled her hair, and made up. And when I went out into the street, I poured rain, but such, what a hundred years in Moscow was not. The hair and makeup disappeared, as never before, the wet dress stuck to the body ...

But, perhaps, this rain went on time - washed away all the superficial, artificial, false and "showed" the true Gundareva - with magnificent, Kustodiev forms, with their lovely cones, red curls, an open smile and bottomlessly sad eyes. At the school it was accepted.


Upon his graduation (with distinction, of course) Gundarev was invited by four leading Moscow theaters. She chose the theater of Mayakovsky and "his" director - Andrei Goncharov. And then there was the first role in the movie. Her barmaid Nadia is harmless, soft, heartfelt, dreaming of women's happiness - this is the prototype of future heroines Gundareva - a citizen of Nikanorova and Nina Buzykina of the "Autumn Marathon". Many believe that this heroine is close to Gundareva. However, Natalia Georgievna herself did not like this role, and that's why. "In the last frame I'm sad and proud - I go to the cafe. I will die - I will remember this picture. Because even such a screen format was not invented to fit my back, "the actress sneered.


"Winter Evening in the Gagra"

One of the brightest roles of Natalia Gundareva (though not the main, and small). She played a singer, such a queen of the then Soviet variety, who can make a scandal "on the level", and maybe "pardon". In this capricious heroine with obvious signs of stellar illness, a very real singer of the "Brezhnev times" (and ours too) was clearly discernible.

Gundareva herself did not have any symptoms of stellar illness. She did not like hangouts, it was an idle pastime, she hardly transferred the attention of journalists to her private life. Especially acute she experienced when the paparazzi secretly shot her, slain by an ailment.

Natalia Gundareva has always been busy working in the theater and cinema. I did not give myself a break. "I myself" and "I should" - were her favorite phrases since childhood. When my father left the family, and my mother wriggled out as best she could, she and Natasha lived permanently in debt: her mother received a salary and distributed her debts (but she always made a small feast-she bought a cake or a chicken on the day of the pay). The remaining money was not enough to live up to the salary, so again had to borrow ... This "carousel" lasted until Natasha got a job. But the fear of being someone must remain with her forever. Maybe that's why she went to the shooting instead of vacation. She always worked, not sparing herself - and this is not an exaggeration: on tour in Germany, Natalia Georgievna played the play "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk" four times in a row, and from the transferred strain she lost her hearing. Later, in Kiev, at the play "Victoria" she had a hypertensive crisis - and then, playing a scene during which she lost consciousness, Gundareva always experienced real horror. But each time she took herself in hand and played the play till the end.

Having fallen into a serious car accident, she was able to return to work and normal life, and, having overcome her own fear, again to sit behind the wheel. "Natasha, to whom and what do you prove?" - asked her Andrei Goncharov. "To yourself, Andrei Alexandrovich, to yourself," replied Natalia Gundareva. The people suffering from stellar illness respond differently to such questions ...


"Personal file of Nikanorova's citizen"

This playwright Victor Merezhko wrote specifically for Natalia Gundareva. "In the role of Katya Nikanorova, who is ready to love everyone not only from promiscuity, but also from the need to care for someone, the thirst for love, Natalia Gundareva from the grotesque, through the finest psychological analysis, comes to a true drama," commented the highbrow film critics in the film encyclopedia skill actress.

Natalia Georgievna in life had little in common with Katya Nikanorova. However, what feelings raged in her soul, we no longer know - Gundareva always kept her private life under the barn castle. But some of its details have become public ...

Her first husband was director Leonid Kheifets. He offered Natalia a role in the television performance based on Goncharov's novel The Cliff, she agreed. Joint creativity brought together two bright personalities, eventually they got married. I must say that the life of Leonid at the time of their meeting was completely unsettled. He spent the night ... in the theater of the Soviet Army, in the literal sense - behind the scenes. Natalia Georgievna, naturally, could not live with her husband in the theater, an eternal "housing issue" arose. Fortunately, the situation was resolved successfully - the newlyweds were given an apartment in the "acting" house on Tverskaya Street. Her location was very convenient for Leonid, since he worked nearby - in the Maly Theater. Natalya's husband, unlike her, was a bohemian man, he loved big companies and feasts. Usually after rehearsal in the theater he invited to his home, almost the whole troupe. "Natasha, cover the table!" - he shouted from the doorway, and Natasha began to peel potatoes, put on the table, sit until the morning at the table, in time bringing food, and then clean the table and ... go to work. And the next day everything was repeated again. These bohemian "gatherings" affected the work in the theater and cinema - tired, not getting enough sleep, she went to rehearsal or shooting. It was not easy. It was not easy, and to part with her husband after six years of marriage. But I had to ...

But in the second marriage, Natalia Georgievna experienced the fact that then she will play so convincingly on the screen in the "Autumn Marathon" and "The Judge Ivanova's Personal Deed" - the betrayal of her husband.


Actor Viktor Koreshkov worked with Gundareva in the Mayakovsky Theater. They played together in a play in which Natalia Georgievna - Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk district - for many years shone. Victor played Sergey - the beloved heroine of Gundareva - the fatal Catherine Izmailova, which Sergey also cruelly betrays.

The passions, which were boiling on the stage, quickly moved on to the real relationship between Victor and Natalia. Their romance developed in front of the whole company and ended with a wedding, quiet and modest.

Peace and love reigned for a short time in the family. After some time, the young husband suddenly disappeared, closed in the bathroom to talk on the phone, and one day did not come to sleep ...

Bad forebodings of the strong and proud Natalia Gundareva were justified: Viktor, the theater hero-lover, had another woman - a Moscow singer.

Koreshkov and Gundarev divorced as calmly as they were married. But it so happened that fate saved her from this fate.


The last role

It was her most difficult role. Unbearable, painful, painful. But fate gave her Natalia Georgievna without demand, without warning, without "declaration of war" ...

The "appointment" for this role was the exact date - July 19, 2001. This day Natalia Georgievna spent at the dacha: long sunbathing under the scorching sun, then bathed in cold water, after decided to work out on the simulators. And in the evening the husband found her lying unconscious in the kitchen. Natalia Georgievna came to herself in the hospital with a diagnosis of a "vast stroke" ...

And now every day, waking up, and sometimes not falling asleep at all, she played this hateful role, which has nothing to do with it. She played that she believes that everything will be fine, and that she will be healthy again. Out of the last forces she represented fun to her husband. "Pretended" that does not feel hell. She pretended that an aged woman, a helpless woman, reflected in a mirror, was she, People's Artiste Natalia Gundareva. "I did not notice" her husband's embarrassed eyes when she asked about mother and beloved director Andrey Goncharova (both Natalia and Georgyevna's mom and the director passed away, but the husband did not dare to inform her about it). And she desperately hoped that one day she would play this role to the end and an unseen director would release her to freedom - in a life where she could choose the roles herself ...

Four years, Natalia Georgievna fought for her life. For the right to play again on stage and at the cinema. Finally, just to live a normal life - without pain and fear.

On May 15, 2005, she played her last role until the end. As usual, in the finale there was an applause for the great actress.