Early Life
She was born Miriam Edez Adelaida Leventon, one of three children of Yakov Leventon and Sonya Horowitz. The family was Jewish and lived in Yalta, Crimea (then a part of the Russian Empire; now a part of Ukraine). She grew up in a dysfunctional family and after her parents' separation was shuffled among boarding schools, foster homes, and relatives. A precocious child, she was playing the violin by age seven.
As a teenager she began to pursue an interest in the theatre and took acting lessons at the Academy of Acting in Moscow before joining Constantin Stanislavski's Moscow Art Theatre as "Alla Nazimova," and later just "Nazimova." (Her stage name was a combination of her middle name Adelaida - shortened to Alla, usually a distinct Russian first name in its own right - and the surname of Nadezhda Nazimova, the heroine of the Russian novel Children of the Streets.
Read more about this topic: Alla Nazimova
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Some would find fault with the morning red, if they ever got up early enough.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Some things in life are bad
They can really make you mad
Other things just make you swear and curse
When you’re chewing on life’s gristle
Don’t grumble, give a whistle
And this’ll help turn things out for the best ...
And ... always look on the bright side of life.”
—Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Mr. Frisbee III (Eric Idle)