Oleg Basilashvili

Oleg Valerianovich Basilashvili is an outstanding Soviet and Russian theatre and film actor, and public figure. He is the author of memoirs and has taken part in many television interviews.

He was born into the family of Valerian Noshrevanovich Basilashvili (1900–1975) and Irina Sergeyevna Ilyinskaya (1908–1980), a well-known philologist and Pushkin scholar. During the war, his father and older brother fought as officers on the front; his brother was killed near Kursk. Oleg, together with his mother and grandmother, was evacuated to Georgia.

In 1956, Oleg Basilashvili graduated from the Moscow Art Theatre Studio School (the class of Pavel Massalsky) and was assigned, together with his wife Tatyana Doronina, to the Stalingrad Regional Theatre, which they left without beginning their stage careers there. After moving to Leningrad, they were invited to the Lenin Komsomol Theatre. In 1959, they transferred to the Maxim Gorky Bolshoi Drama Theatre, where Basilashvili eventually became one of the leading actors. His first marriage ended after eight years; his second wife was television director Galina Mshanskaya.

The actor gained wide recognition for his roles in Eldar Ryazanov’s films (Office Romance, Station for Two, Say a Word for the Poor Hussar) and Georgy Daneliya’s Autumn Marathon. At the end of the 1980s, Oleg Basilashvili was active in public life: first as a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, and in 1990–1993 as a people’s deputy of the RSFSR.