25 Facts About Anastasiya Vertinskaya

Anastasiya Alexandrovna Vertinskaya is a Soviet and Russian actress, who came to prominence in the early 1960s with her acclaimed performances in Scarlet Sails, Amphibian Man and Grigori Kozintsev's Hamlet.

In 1988 Vertinskaya was designated a People's Artist of Russia.

Anastasiya Vertinskaya is a recipient of the Order of Honour and the Order of Friendship.

Anastasiya Vertinskaya was born on 19 December 1944, in Moscow, soon after her father, the famous singer-songwriter Alexander Vertinsky returned from Harbin with his Georgian wife, painter and actress Lidiya Vertinskaya.

Vertinsky never scolded his daughters for failures, of which there were many because, as Anastasiya Vertinskaya later remembered, she was more concerned at the time with exploring her dad's vast library than with her school studies.

Young Anastasiya Vertinskaya was thinking of a career in linguistics, but things changed overnight in 1961 when the then sixteen-year-old was approached personally by the film director Aleksandr Ptushko for the role of Assol in Scarlet Sails.

In 1962 Anastasiya Vertinskaya starred in the Amphibian Man, Gennady Kazansky and Vladimir Chebotarev's adaptation of Alexander Belyayev's science fiction novel of the same title.

In 1962 Anastasiya Vertinskaya joined the Moscow Pushkin Drama Theatre troupe.

In 1963, assisted by Lyudmila Maksakova, her elder sister Marianna's friend, Anastasiya Vertinskaya enrolled into the Boris Shchukin Theatre Institute.

The role of Ophelia in the 1964 Grigori Kozintsev film Hamlet made Anastasiya Vertinskaya known internationally and proved to be a turning point in her career.

In 1967 Anastasiya Vertinskaya joined the Vakhtangov Theatre troupe and spent there one season, before moving to Sovremennik in 1968, where she stayed until 1980.

In 1980 Anastasiya Vertinskaya left Sovremennik for the Moscow Art Theater.

At MAT Anastasiya Vertinskaya mastered two roles from Anton Chekhov's repertoire, traditionally regarded as difficult: Nina Zarechnaya and Yelena Andreyevna.

In 1989 Anastasiya Vertinskaya portrayed her own father in The Mirage or the Russian Pierrot's Way, a show that she herself wrote a script for and directed to mark the centennial birthday anniversary of Alexander Vertinsky.

Anastasiya Vertinskaya remembered how in Sovremennik she was shifted back to the mass scenes.

Anastasiya Vertinskaya spent the next 12 years teaching in England, France and Switzerland.

In 2010 Anastasiya Vertinskaya published a book of poetry she'd been working on for five years.

Anastasiya Vertinskaya is involved in her son Stepan Mikhalkov's restaurant business in Moscow.

The progress Anastasiya Vertinskaya made "from the charming but one-dimensional Assol-Ophelia" to the versatile multi-faceted master of many genres, was enormous, argued the critic Tatyana Moskvina.

Later Anastasiya Vertinskaya solidified her reputation as "the nation's most secretive movie treasure," avoiding journalists and making her private life the subject of rumours and insinuations.

In 1981, Anastasiya Vertinskaya was designated the People's Artist of the RSFSR.

Anastasiya Vertinskaya received the Order of Honour in 2005 and the Order of Friendship in 2010.

In 1967 Anastasiya Vertinskaya married Nikita Mikhalkov, now a renowned Russian film director and actor, then a fellow student at the Boris Shchukin Theatre Institute.

Later Anastasiya Vertinskaya was romantically involved with actor Mikhail Kozakov, then had a three-year-long relationship with Russian rock singer-songwriter Alexander Gradsky.

Anastasiya Vertinskaya is a godmother to Anna, Artem, and Nadia, Nikita's children from his second wife.