Aleksandr Gavrilovich Abdulov was born in Tobolsk (Siberia) on May, 29th, 1953. The future star was born into a theatrical family – his father was the director of a theater in Fergana, Uzbekistan. Though Aleksandr first took the stage when a five-year-old boy, he didn't aspire to the actor's career - at school he went in for sports and was fond of music. At his father’s insistence he tried to enter Schepkin Theatre School, but was no success, and therefore, after returning from Moscow he successfully passed exams for the Physical Culture Faculty in a local teacher's training institute. Nevertheless, a year later Aleksandr Abdulov again went to Moscow and this time entered GITIS, the course of I.M.Rayevsky.

The actor debuted in filming in 1974: when a student yet, he played a small role of Commando Kozlov in Michael Ptashuk's film About Vitya, Masha and the Marines. In 1975 Abdulov’s playing in a degree performance was noticed by Mark Zakharov, the main director of the Moscow Lenkom Theater, who invited the young actor his troupe. From then on Aleksandr Abdulov’s name was inseparably linked with Zakharov’s theater.

Among Abdulov’s most known theatre works was his role in the famous Lencom’s performance Juno and Avos. For his role in the play Barbarian and Heretic he received Crystal Turandot Prize and the Award of Stanislavsky Foundation.

In the mid-1970s the young actor’s film career was developing on full scale. However, Aleksandr Abdulov gained wide popularity only after the role of the Bear in the romantic and musical television film An Ordinary Miracle (1978) directed by Mark Zakharov on the basis of the same-name play by Evgenie Schwarz. A new success was Pavel Arsenov's melodrama after A.Volodin's play S lyubimymi ne rasstavaites (aka Don't Leave Your Lovers) (1979) starring Abdulov as Mitya and Irina Alfyorova, his wife at the time, as the female lead.

Aleksandr Abdulov’s uncommon gift made him able to play equally successful versatile roles, in various genres and with different film directors. Among his most famous actor's works there is Nikita in Tatyana Lioznova's Carnival, Murderer Rober from Alla Surikova's eccentric detective Look for a Woman, and lyrical character Ivan from Charodei.

An actor of a wide creative range, Aleksandr Abdulov played in comedies, dramas, detective stories, and historical films. One should especially mention Aleksandr Abdulov’s works in Mark Zakharov's films Tot samyi Munchgausen starring Oleg Yankovsky (1979), Formula Lyubvi (1984), and Ubit drakona (1988), which at once won viewers’ love, and in Sergey Solovyev 's films Chyornaya roza - emblema pechali, krasnaya roza - emblema lyubvi (1989) and Dom pod zvyozdnym nebom (1991), which became a remarkable event in Russian cinema of the 1980s-90s.

In 1991 Abdulov’s collaboration with film director Victor Sergeyev started, and their first film, a picaresque detective Genius turned to be one of the most interesting and popular movies of those years. But Victor Sergeyev's another film Schizophrenia (1997) written by Aleksandr Abdulov himself, was not such a success as Genius.

Aleksandr Abdulov was a People's Artist of Russia. He received numerous prizes and awards, among them the Order of Merit for the Fatherland IV (2007).

The famed actor died of cancer in Moscow on January, 3rd, 2008 and was laid to rest in Vagankovskoe Cemetery in Moscow, Russia.

Read about other Russian Actors