Svetlana Vladimirovna Nemolyaeva (Russian: Светла́на Влади́мировна Немоля́ева; born 18 April 1937, Moscow) is a Soviet and Russian actress of film and theatre. She is the widow of Alexander Lazarev.

Biography

Svetlana Nemolyaeva was born in Moscow in 1937. Her father Vladimir Viktorovich Nemolyaev (1902-1987) was a film director, her mother Valentina Lvovna Nemolyaeva (née Ladygina, 1907-1988), a sound engineer at the film studio. Among the family friends were renowned Soviet actors Lyudmila Tselikovskaya, Mikhail Zharov, Vsevolod Pudovkin, a star circus comic Rumyantsev. Parents were often filming their little daughter in mass scenes; Nemolyaeva's first feature film was Konstantin Yudin's Twins (1945), starring Tselikovskaya and Zharov, where the 8-year old played Svetochka.

In 1958, after graduating the Shchepkin's Theatre College, Nemolyaeva joined the Theatre on Malaya Bronnaya, then, after just one season moved to the Mayakovsky Theatre where she remained for the rest of her life. One of her first successes there was the part of Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, produced by the then theatre's director Nikolai Okhlopkov. Later, as Andrey Goncharov came to become the head of the theatre, she created several outstanding characters, notably Blanche in Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire and the Mayoress Anna Andreevna in Nikolai Gogol’s Revizor.

Svetlana Nemolyaeva's first success on screen came was the part of Olga Larina in Roman Tikhomirov's Evgeny Onegin (1958). She had to wait several years for another big part, in Konstantin Khudyakov's Such a Short Long Life (1975), co-starring Alexander Lazarev, fellow Mayakovsky Theatre actor whom she married in 1960. Her real breakthrough came when Eldar Ryazanov invited her to play Olya Ryzhova in his highly successful intellectual comedy Office Romance. Later he filmed her again, in The Garage. In 1980 Svetlana Nemolyaeva was awarded the prestigious title of the People's Artist of Russia. In the 1980s and 1990s Nemolyaeva continued to appear on screen regularly; critically acclaimed were her parts of Madam Zizi (Say a Word for a Poor Hussar), actress Nina Ossovskaya (The Intrusion), Irina in The Relatives (TV play) and Matilda (The Dame’s Visit). She was awarded (twice) Order For Merit to the Fatherland, 4th and 3rd class (2007, 2012).