Early Life
Smirnoff was born Yakov Naumovich Pokhis (Ukrainian: Яків Наумович Похис) in Odessa, Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union. He is Jewish. He was an art teacher in Odessa and continues to paint. He came to the United States in 1977 and became an American citizen on 4 July 1986. Smirnoff spent a portion of his early days in the United States working as a bartender at Grossingers Hotel in the Catskill Mountains of New York and living in the employee dormitory.
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Famous quotes related to early life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)