Kirill Yuryevich Lavrov was born on September 15, 1925 into the family of actors in Leningrad. As a youth already he figured out his actor’s vocation, but some obstacles came in the beginning: in 1941, after the war broke out, he with his mother and younger sister were evacuated to the Kirov Region. Kirill worked there as a loader, and in 1942, when the family moved to Novosibirsk, started work as a turner at a plant. In the beginning of 1943 he volunteered to the army, and was assigned to the Astrakhan Military and Technical School. He finished it in 1945, and for 5 years served on the Iturup Island in the Far East. This is where he remembered his love for the theater and decided to enter a theatre college. However, he was not admitted to the college because of lacking a school-leaving certificate. And yet he was admitted to the Lesya Ukrainka Kiev Academic Theater of Russian Drama.
In 1950-1955 Kirill Lavrov worked in Kiev. At first he played in crowd scenes and then started getting roles. Thanks to his good looks and scenic charm he was a success in playing an entire series of interesting roles, gaining experience, professional skill and popularity.
In 1951 the graduate of the Moscow Art Theatre School Studio Valentina Nikolaeva arrived in Kiev and soon became the wife of Kirill Lavrov. In 1955 the couple moved to Leningrad, where they were invited by K.Khokhlov, who had been appointed the art director of the Bolshoi Drama Theater. From that time on Lavrov’s creative biography was inseparably linked with this theater and from 1989 and till the end of his life he was its art director.
The career of Kirill Lavrov was quite bright and successful. His perseverance, honesty and sincerity, ability to be friends, maturity as an actor and a personality left nobody indifferent. A number of his theater and film roles became truly legendary. By the way Kirill Lavrov made his film debut in 1955 in the movie Vasek Trubachev and His Companions. He played his first lead in film Quarrel in Lukashi (1959).
His other well-known film works were the roles in the movies:
Alive and Dead,
Echo of Distant Explosion,
Lyubov Yarovaya,
The Karamazov Brothers,
Taming of Fire,
Trust,
Water Glass,
My Tender and Gentle Animal,
Uncle Vanya,
Master and Margarita,
Gangster Petersburg, etc. Kirill Lavrov was also known for his public work both in Russia and the USSR. He was the People's Deputy of the USSR of several convocations, headed the Leningrad Branch of the All-Union Theatrical Society and the Theatre Union of the USSR, together with
Oleg Yefremov headed the International Confederation of Theatre Unions (from 1992), and was a member of the Committee on Science, Culture, Education and Information of the Inter-parliamentary Assembly of the CIS countries.
Till his last days the actor worked a lot. Kirill Yuryevich Lavrov died on April 27, 2007 and was buried near his wife in the Bogoslovsky Cemetery in St. Petersburg. He had a number of honorary titles, was awarded various prizes, but the major award was people’s love, respect and memory, in which he will remain one of the most esteemed actors.
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Kirill Lavrov
