Aleksandr Abdulov, Actor and Director: You Take My Job Away and I’ll Die

Yelena Gladskih,

Aleksandr Abdulov, an actor and a director, confides in having to support three families. Nevertheless, he feels ‘quite comfortable' about it. ‘You take my job away from me and I'll die', he says.

On 27 February - 10 March, Moscow-based Lenkom Theatre comes to Kyiv on tour arranged by the Viktor Pinchuk Fund. The Moscovites bring with them their three best performances featuring appearances of such theatrical stars as Irina Churikova, Aleksandra Zakharova, Viktor Rakov, and Aleksandr Zbruev. Aleksandr Abdulov performs the protagonist role in one of the most controversial theatre's performances - ‘A Flight Over the Cuckoo's Nest'(Eclipse).

DELO managed to meet Aleksandr Gavrilovich in the Lenkom sneaking a couple of minutes of his free time in between rehearsals.

- Aleksandr Gavrilovich, do you personally know Viktor Pinchuk who has invited Lenkom to its Kyiv tour?

- Yes. Viktor Pinchuk is an old friend of mine and of all our theatre. He is a very decent and nice guy. I've made an acquaintance with him in Dnipropetrovsk already. It is not the first time he arranges our tour. It is wonderful he has come unaffected by all those negative phenomena, those half-words and apophases that suddenly sprang to stand in between our countries. I think, nothing will change anyway as we will love each other same way we have done it before. Maybe, there are some changes on the pinnacle of power; but it is wonderful there are people who understand that our friendship has to live forever and that we speak one and the same language.

- Are you going to us on tour only, or there is some other business to attend here, as well?

-If everything checks ok - pray Lord! - I will be shooting my own movie in Ukraine this summer. It will be the Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin. There will be the Balaklava bay, the best ever place I've ever seen. I will go to Ukraine for assistance - I will not succeed without local government's support. We will also shoot in Sochi, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Astrakhan, Paris, and Venice. This will quite an expensive movie with 6 mln. budget.

- Who's sponsoring the movie?

- We chipped off a bit here, a bit there. Plus support from the government. Moscow patrons of art contribute, too. They are people who already understand it that one will never carry everything away with him into the afterlife. If you want to leave after you not only some mansion, but also good memories - some movies, books, performances - you have to donate, you know...

-In one of your earlier interviews you refrained from telling how much did you earn in the theatre saying you would be ashamed to give out the pay a People's Artist receives. Are you feeling the same about it now?

- No, now not. Now we are paid good money. My every appearance brings me up to $2,000. Three years back from now it could be $100 or $50.

- But do you have a fee margin below which you would not agree today?

- Sure.

- Would you let it out?

- Hope.

- Any case of some real ‘crazy' fee you have been ever offered?

- Yes, and I turned the offer down. I was offered $200,000 to appear in a commercial. Quite a pretty penny, you know. Could've easily finished the building of my house for it.

- What were you offered to advertise?

- Some TV set... I pondered the idea overnight. Then remembered the words by Ranevskaya: money guzzles, shame remains - and turned it down. I've never gone for commercial advertising.

- Any reverse story then: that is, when you agreed to a ridiculous fee just because of..?

- Yes, because it was a director! There is Roman Balayan, one of my favourite directors, living in Ukraine. I would be ashamed to ask Roman how much would I get. Same goes about Zakharov, Soloviev...

- But is it not for them feeling embarrassed of offering you a ‘ridiculous' fee?

- It's another story yet. I do know these guys shoot movies not for earning a fortune. They do not profiteer on it either. They make cinema to leave a MOVIE afterwards. And I do understand that, if they offer me that, it is for good.

- How do you manage your earnings? Do you buy shares? Or beef up your deposit account?

- No. I have no even a savings account.

- What about property?

- Oomph, property... I have an apartment, and a dacha. That's all.

- Any assistants? Domestic servants?

- I have a housemaid. There is also another guy, he's a superintendent. He's in charge of all my house economy, the premises, my mom. They have been with me for more than a decade now, this is why they have keys from all the doors. I can trust in them in any matter. There is also a chauffeur. I have two Volkswagen cars, a Tuareg and a Multi-van, my office on wheels.

- How much do you spend?

- All money I earn go through the ‘hole.' I have to support two families - even three of them: the mom, my brother with his wife, and my own family. No one of them works, everything is on me. If I skip working, we will die of hunger.

- Have you ‘invested' in your daughter, if you pardon me this currently posh coin phrase? Did you send her to study abroad?

- Never. It was a miracle she got two higher educations here. Her English is the one of a genius.

- How do you manage to keep track of everything?

- I have a special man in charge of organising my schedules 3-5 months ahead. It's because I'm unable to keep everything in my head now. Say, that summer I was filmed in six movies.

- Any ‘sacred' weekend days?

- Three times a year: 10 days of fishing at Maldives in November; a weeklong fishing at Astrakhan in May; and a fishing spree to Kamchatka in summertime. It is beyond discussions.

- How do you keep in shape? Going to sports club?

- Never been there. What sports? The work takes so much time, come on. No time to take a break. A friend of mine had a wonderful saying: There is nothing as near noxious for a man than the fresh air and sports. He was right in some respect: I had been into professional sports time ago; even got the master of sports degree. Then it retaliated on my body in such a way I dreamt I would have never done that. We play soccer from time to time, though.

- Yet all the male actors grow older later than the men of their age somehow. What's the clue - some diet?

- What? I'm happy whenever I have a minute to snack...

- Are there days when you would rather forget about everything?

- When I feel something goes wrong, I try to hide in my digs to wait the time away. I with my friends have been faithfully keeping together for many years. These days it becomes harder and harder with each passing year, them leaving me... I bid farewell to one of the friends of mine just yesterday.

- Ever woke up to the idea: "I've changed, too"?

- Nope. I'm a pie-dog. Through a pedigree dog and a pie-dog out of the house in winter time - who's going to survive? The pie-dog will survive because he's nowhere to expect his food from. No one will toss him anything from the table.

- And you still maintain you are comfortable?

- You take my job away from me and I will die

- Is it not too aristocratic for a ‘pie-dog'?

- Maybe, blood does matter. All of my predecessors along my granny line were noblemen. My granddad was a genuine ‘layman'. He served in the Chapayev Division. He married my granny just because she, having come to see here aunt, and he saw her walking along the village street in a hat. He had never seen anything like that before. I will marry her, he said, and did so. They threw him behind the bars three times under Stalin. He served three terms then.

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