Biography
Anatoli Papanov was born into a family of common workers in Vyazma. The family moved to Moscow in the 1930s. As a schoolboy he attended a drama circle, yet he pursued an actor’s career only after having worked as a caster at a factory and fought in the second world war. In 1942 he was badly wounded and invalided to the reserve. As a student of GITIS (State Institute of Theatre Arts) he met his future wife, his fellow student Nadezhda Karatayeva, who had also seen war, being a nurse in a hospital train. They got married ten days after the end of war, on May 20, 1945.
Gaining recognition on stage of the Moscow Theatre of Satire (where he altogether worked for about 40 years) in the mid 1950s Anatoli Papanov attracted attention of film directors as well. He started with supporting roles in comedies, yet became really famous after his work as General Serpilin in the war drama The Alive and the Dead (1963).
He was most popular for his roles in the comedies of director Leonid Gaidai (especially in The Diamond Arm, 1968) and as Wolf (voice) in the animation series Nu, pogodi!.
His last work was in the tragic drama Cold Summer of 1953 (1987) Papanov died of a heart attack on August 7, 1987 while taking a cold shower (the hot water was off that day), just nine days before the death of his long-time friend and co-star Andrei Mironov. Anatoli Papanov was laid to rest in the Novodevichy Cemetery.
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