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Natalia Varley is a Actor Russe born on 22 june 1947 at Constanţa (Roumanie)

Natalia Varley

Natalia Varley
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Birth name Natalya Vladimirovna Varley
Nationality Russie
Birth 22 june 1947 (76 years) at Constanţa (Roumanie)

Natalya Varley (Russian: Наталья Владимировна Варлей, b. June 22, 1947 in Constanţa, Romania) is a Soviet and Russian film and theater actress, RSFSR Honoured artist (1989).

Biography

Natalya Varley was born in Constanţa, Romania, a daughter of the sea captain Vladimir Viktorovich Varley, who was also a one-time City Council chairman (Mayor, in modern terms) of Murmansk where the family lived. One of his 19th century paternal ancestors was a Welsh jockey who (along with his brother) had been invited to Russia to manage a horse-breeding factory, married a Russian and settled there. Natalya's mother, Ariadna Sergeyevna Varley (nee Senyavina), a granddaughter of geologist Yevgeny Barbot de Marni, was of French and German origins, a distant relative to Alexey K. Tolstoy.

Natalya was an artistic child; she started writing poetry at the age of four, was fond of painting and studied music. In the late 1950s, as the family settled in Moscow, she entered the Tsvetnoy Boulevard Circus's Children Studio and made a quick progress there, which was all the more impressive, considering she'd been a sickly child and suffered from rheumatism-related heart disorder which for several years prevented her from taking sports at school. After graduating the State Circus and Entertainment Art college in 1965, Varley joined the Moscow Tsvetnoy Boulevard Circus troupe as an equilibrist.


Career
In 1965, in Odessa where the troupe was on tour, Varley met a renown Soviet clown and film actor Leonid Yengibarov. As passionate as she was about poetry, he proved to be a kindred spirit and became close friend, as well as occasional stage partner. Among the friends he on one occasion brought in to enjoy their performance happened to be the film director Georgy Yungwald-Khilkevich. Stricken by Varley's stage persona, the latter invited her for a minor role to his latest movie, The Formula of Rainbow. During the filming Varley was spotted by the assistant of another film director, Leonid Gaidai, who invited her to the auditions for his new project, Kidnapping, Caucasian Style.


Amongst some 500 contenders there were celebrities like Natalya Fateyeva and Anastasiya Vertinskaya, but the director chose the 19-year-old amateur for the leading role. According to Gaidai, Varley has won him with her ingénue charms, but she later opined that one particular episode might have proved to be the decisive one....So I came to the Mosfilm. Read a script fragment. Did the donkey episode. Then Gaidai asks me, somewhat diffidently: 'And now, Natasha, could I ask you perhaps to undress - down to a swimming suit?' 'Sure', I said, and did. Everybody just went: 'Aahh!' It is now that for actresses undressing is business-as-usual. In those years the Soviet cinema, as well as the Soviet people, were so much more shy. But for me the swimming-suit was a kind of Circus uniform, I got used to it. So we shoot the episode with a swimming-suit, and I think it was the one that made all the difference.
Natalya and her heroine Nina were the complete opposites. "She was supposed to be self-assured, cheeky and optimistic. Whereas I've always been rather quiet, dreamy and romantic. So Gaidai had to re-mold me almost literally during the shooting, into a true "Komsomolka, sportsmenka and an all-round looker," she later reminisced.



Kidnapping, Caucasian Style, which premiered on 1 April 1967, became a huge success and Varley found herself an overnight superstar. Hugely popular was "The White Bears' Song", recorded for the film by Aida Vedishcheva. Varley's speaking voice was over-dubbed too, by Nadezhda Rumyantseva. Years later, when Varley embarked upon successful musical career (to often perform the famous song very close to the original) and herself became a well-known voiceover artist, doubts as to the wiseness of such a move were raised. "Gaidai grossly mistreated Varley by stripping her of her own voice. Natasha would have done exactly the same [as Vedishcheva and Rumayntseva did], except that maybe less forcefully," fellow actress and Gaidai's widow Nina Grebeshkova (cast in the film as a psychiatry ward doctor) later opined.

Varley found herself in the focus of media attention; crowds of fans started to gather wherever she would arrive to perform with her Circus troupe. This sudden fame made her none the richer: Varley claims to have been paid 300 rubles (two average Soviet monthly wages) for the blockbuster the popularity of which never waned.

In October 1967 the first Soviet horror movie, Viy (after Nikolay Gogol's novella of the same name) was premiered. Here Varley provided another striking performance, now as Pannochka, a murdered witch, rising off her coffin to torment and finally kill a hapless seminary student (played by Leonid Kuravlyov), who had inadvertently brought about her death. Several other films of the late 1960s featured Natalya Varley, who has by now left the Moscow Circus to become a Boris Shchukin Theatre Institute student. Among them were Seven Brides of Corporal Zbruyev and The Twelve Chairs, the latter again by Gaidai.



In 1971 Varley graduated the Theatre Institute and joined the Moscow Drama Stanislavsky Theatre troupe where she worked till 1978. This was not a happy experience. Four directors came and went in the course of seven years; a long vacation had to be taken due to pregnancy (in 1972 she gave birth to her first son Vladimir) and the general atmosphere of jealousy, ill-will and petty intrigue proved to be utterly depressing for Varley.

Varley continued to be filmed throughout the 1980s, but despite some minor successes (The Great Attraction, My Father Is an Idealist, I Don't Want to Be an Adult) her career in cinema was ostensibly in decline. In the mid-1990s (after The Wizard of the Emerald City, 1994, where she played both of the two wicked witches) Varley retired, explaining this decision with her dissatisfaction with the dire quality of the scripts she'd been offered.

Prior to that, in the late 1980s Varley joined the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute which she graduated in 1994. Some of the poetry she'd written through the years became song lyrics. Working with the composer Nikolai Shershen, she released four studio albums in 1992-1999: At the Peak of Togetherness, Don't Die, Love, Aqua Vitae and The String in Me, Don't Break. She also authored three books of poetry.

In the 2000s Natalya Varley occasionally performed (the production of Oskar by the Empire of Stars, a private theatre) and gave solo concerts. She also hosted a couple of TV shows ("Household Affairs", Domashnye khlopoty; Your Business, Delo vashe). In 2009 she took part in the Russian Channel One "Two Stars" project, to perform in tandem with Ukrainian pop veteran Nikolai Gnatyuk.


Activism
From the early 1990s Natalya Varley was a Communist Party supporter who openly voiced her dissatisfaction with Boris Yeltsin's policies. She joined the so-called "Moral Revival" committee and backed Gennady Zyuganov's 1996 election campaign.

A devout Christian, Varley took part in several public actions of protet against what she saw as the 'satanic tendencies' in the democratic Russia's cinema and modern art where scandalous 'performances' became the norm, like that of Avdey Ter-Oganyan who infamously destroyed icons with an axe in the Moscow Manege. Alongside Nikita Mikhalkov she became highly popular with the Russian Orthodox media.

In 2013 Varley was one of the organizers of the 20th anniversary commemoration event memorizing the victims of the 3–4 October 1993 events.

Usually with

Source : Wikidata

Filmography of Natalia Varley (8 films)

Display filmography as list

Actress

Wolfhound of the Grey Dog Clan, 2h16
Directed by Nikolaï Lebedev
Origin Russie
Genres Fantasy, Action, Adventure
Themes Films about magic and magicians
Actors Oksana Akinchina, Alexandre Domogarov, Igor Petrenko, Nina Usatova, Juozas Budraitis, Natalia Varley
Roles Mat Kendarat
Rating56% 2.8490452.8490452.8490452.8490452.849045
The setting of the film is a high fantasy Dark Ages Europe, in which desperate and bloodthirsty warlords fight brutal battles in their eternal quest for overlordship. Yet their swords, shields, lances, spears and arrows are all brittle, prone to wear and tear, and dull, protracting their campaigns against each other without end. Word spreads of a man in one of the Northern tribes: an adept blacksmith capable of crafting far hardier, stronger, sharper, and more durable weapons than any other known to exist, with aid of a mystical element. The warlords search for the enigmatic master of weapons to no avail.
Guest from the Future
Genres Science fiction, Adventure
Themes Time travel films, Films based on science fiction novels
Actors Natalia Gousseva, Georgi Burkov, Vyacheslav Nevinny, Mikhaïl Kononov, Valentina Talyzina, Natalia Varley
Roles Marta Erastovna Skryl', trener
Rating80% 4.038454.038454.038454.038454.03845
Two schoolboys, Kolya and Fima, follow a mysterious strange lady to an abandoned house. When they enter the house, they find no trace of the stranger, but in the empty basement Kolya discovers a secret door that leads to a room with a technical device in it. Curious Kolya starts pressing some buttons and activates the device that "transfers" him to another place. We learn that this place is the institute for temporal research. Employees return from time travels to different periods and deliver artifacts that are inventoried by Werther, an android who holds a secret crush on the stranger whose name is Polina. Kolya sneaks around in the corridors but is ultimatively caught by Werther who starts inventorying Kolya as well, assuming that he was brought in by Polina. On this occasion Kolya learns that he has actually travelled through time into the late 21st century. Werther ponders putting Kolya in the museum but then decides to send him back in time in order to cover up what he thinks to be Polina's mistake. Kolya convinces him to let him catch some sights of the future first. On his exploration, Kolya learns about teletransportation, humanoid aliens, antigravity and space flight. He also makes contact with a grandpa Pavel, a 130-year-old man who is intrigued by his 1980s school uniform.
Errors of Youth, 1h27
Directed by Boris Frumin
Origin Russie
Genres Drama
Actors Marina Neïolova, Natalia Varley, Nikolai Karachentsov
Roles Zina
Rating65% 3.2709553.2709553.2709553.2709553.270955
The film recounts the restless life of Dmitri Guryanov after he completes his military service.
The Flight
The Flight (1971)
, 3h16
Directed by Alexandre Alov, Alexandre Alov
Origin Russie
Genres Drama, War, Historical
Themes Films about immigration, Politique, Théâtre, La précarité, Political films, Films based on plays
Actors Lioudmila Savelieva, Alexeï Batalov, Mikhaïl Oulianov, Vladislav Dvorzhetsky, Yevgeniy Yevstigneyev, Nikolay Olyalin
Roles fille avec une chevre
Rating77% 3.8767353.8767353.8767353.8767353.876735
Année 1920. La guerre civile dans le sud de la Russie est presque terminée. Alors que l'armée rouge fait son entrée en Crimée, commence l'exode de tous ceux qui redoutent le changement du régime.
Kidnapping, Caucasian Style, 1h17
Directed by Leonid Gaïdaï
Origin Russie
Genres Comedy, Adventure, Musical, Romance
Actors Alexandre Demianenko, Natalia Varley, Yuri Nikulin, Yevgeny Morgunov, Georgy Vitsin, Vladimir Etouch
Roles Nina
Rating82% 4.14534.14534.14534.14534.1453
A kind, yet naïve, ethnography student named Shurik (Demyanenko), known from earlier films as a student at the Polytechnic Institute, goes to the Caucasus to learn ancient customs and traditions practiced by the locals, including local "myths, legends, and toasts". At the start of the film, Shurik is making his way along a mountain road in the Caucasus on a donkey. He comes upon a truck driver named Edik whose truck refuses to start. The donkey gets stubborn and neither man is able to get his respective mode of transportation going.
Viy
Viy (1967)
, 1h18
Directed by Constantin Erchov, Gueorgui Kropatchev
Origin Russie
Genres Drama, Comedy-drama, Fantasy, Horror
Themes Films about religion
Actors Leonid Kouravliov, Natalia Varley, Alekseï Glazyrine, Petro Yukhymovych Vesklyarov, Borislav Brondoukov
Roles Pannochka
Rating71% 3.5957953.5957953.5957953.5957953.595795
As a class of seminary students are sent home for vacation, three of them get lost on the way in the middle of the night. One spots a farmhouse in the distance, and they ask the old woman at the gate to let them spend the night. She agrees, on the condition that they sleep in separate areas of the farm. As one of them, Khoma, lies down in the barn to sleep, the old woman comes to him and tries to seduce him, which he staunchly refuses. She puts him under a spell, and makes him lie down so she can climb on his back. She then rides him around the countryside like a horse. Khoma suddenly finds that they are flying and realizes she is a witch. He demands that she put him back down, and as soon as they land, he grabs a stick and beats her violently. As she cries out that she's dying, he looks and sees she has turned into a beautiful young woman. Horrified, he runs back to his seminary, where he finds the Rector has sent for him. Khoma is told that a rich merchant has a daughter who is dying and needs prayers for her soul, and that she specifically asked for Khoma by name. He refuses to go, but the Rector threatens him with a public beating, so he relents and finds he is returning to the farm where he met the witch. The girl dies before he gets there, and to his horror, he realizes it is the witch, and that he is the cause of her death (but he tells no one). The girl's father promises him great reward if he will stand vigil and pray for her soul for the next three nights. If he does not, grave punishment is implied. After the funeral rites, Khoma is told of a huntsman who fell in love with the young girl, and how when she came into the stable and asked his help to get on her horse, he said he would like it more if she rode on his back, then took her on his back and ran off with her, reminding Khoma of his encounter (the men telling the tale suspect the girl was a witch). He is taken to the chapel where the girl's body lies and is locked in for the night.