Valeri Zolotukhin

Valeri Sergeevich Zolotukhin (, 21 June 1941 – 30 March 2013) was a Soviet and Russian stage and cinema actor who performed at the Taganka Theatre which he also headed between 2011 and 2013. He was named People's Artist of the RSFSR in 1987. Biography Zolotukhin was born in the Bystry Istok village (modern-day Bystroistoksky District of the Altai Krai, Russia) into a peasant family just one day before the Great Patriotic War started. He was one of the three sons of Sergei Illarionovich Zolotukhin, the head of the local kolkhoz who left for the frontline the next day. Valeri spent war years with his mother Matryona Fedoseyevna Zolotukhina. At the age of seven he survived osteomyelitis of one of his legs, spent three years in bed and had to learn to walk again. He remained lame by the time he decided to enter a theatre institute and had to hide it. In 1963 Zolothukhin graduated from the Russian Academy of Theatre Arts, the faculty of musical theater, and entered the Mossovet Theatre where he served for a year. In 1964 he moved to the newly established Taganka Theatre under Yuri Lyubimov where he spent the rest 50 years, taking part in many plays. He was a close friend of Vladimir Vysotsky and regularly performed alongside him, both on stage and in movies. He later published several books of memoirs about their friendship and Taganka Theatre in general. In 1965 Zolothukhin appeared in his first movie Package based on the children's novel by L. Panteleyev, in the leading part of a goofy Red Army soldier. In 1966 the film won Grand Prix at the Zlatá Praha International Television Festival (Czechoslovakia). But real fame came to Zolothukhin only in 1971 after the Bumbarash TV movie where he played a similar goofy soldier. The actor has been closely associated with the Bumbarash character ever since.