Those who watch war films and crime stories will surely remember this charismatic actor. Vladimir Baranov mostly starred in action-packed films, sometimes creating the most controversial characters: from police officers to criminals. And in any role he is organic.
If we take into account his theatrical works, the range of images he creates will expand even more.
In his filmography today there are more than seventy films. The best of them are the paintings "Moonzund", "Genius", "Granny", "Torpedo Bombers", "Sisters". This list can also include the series "Secrets of the Investigation", which withstood eighteen seasons.
Biography
Baranov Vladimir Nikolaevich was born in Ryazan in 1956. He had a happy Soviet childhood, although his mother and three other children were raised by Volodya's mother alone. She worked as a forensic expert, and this work left a certain imprint on the life of the family.
Since childhood, Volodya loved to represent different characters, joke and play around. Therefore, no one was surprised when he entered the Ryazan Theater School and received the education of an actor. It was a happy time - youth, hopes, theater.
Theatre
After college, the young actor went to serve in the drama theater in the city of Yaroslavl. He worked there from 1976 to 1979, played many roles. As the actor himself says, he was young, he had a lot of strength, so he took on any role. In those years, at the Yaroslavl Drama Theater, he played in the performances "Anxious Veresen Month", "Silver Hoof", "Capercaillie's Nest" and others. The young actor liked his work, he gave everything to the fullest.
In the Yaroslavl theater he was noticed by the famous director Zinovy Yakovlevich Korogodsky and invited to work in Leningrad, at the A. A. Bryantsev. This was a very promising proposal, and Baranov agreed. Despite the fact that it was the Youth Theater, the performances were staged here quite serious, take, for example, the performances "Death of a Squadron" or "Hot Stone" based on Arkady Gaidar. They raised serious questions of honor, conscience, justice.
Baranov also played in purely children's performances: "Bambi", "Stop Malakhov" and others. In the Youth Theater, Vladimir Nikolaevich served for more than seventeen years, and then he was invited to the Youth Theater on the Fontanka, where he also played in performances for about five years.
These were the harsh nineties, when the artists' life was not easy. Many theaters simply closed down because spectators stopped coming to the performances due to lack of money. However, he did not want to give up his profession, and Baranov went to work in an experimental theater, which tried to see and show the audience all the sore themes of our life in a new way.
The northern capital still did not become a permanent home for the actor, and in 2013 he returned to Ryazan. His new place of work was the theater for children and youth, where he serves to this day.
Film career
For the first time Baranov starred in a movie when he was twenty-six years old. The most surprising thing was that the young actor was immediately entrusted with the main role in the film Run Up (1982), which told about Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, the country's chief designer, a great man. The audience saw the story of the life and feat of an outstanding personality. And at the same time, this was an ordinary person with his hobbies, doubts, the joy of discovery and the bitterness of defeat. And then - success and world fame, which fell on him after the first flights into space. Baranov splendidly showed here a man with an iron will and an irrepressible striving for a goal, which helped him in the future to become what he became.
In the actor's portfolio there is another film that also tells about people of high moral qualities - this is the picture "Torpedo Bombers" (1983). The audience received him very warmly, first of all, because of the credibility that the director Semyon Aranovich and the entire film crew were able to achieve. It was a "war with a civilian", because the pilots not only fought - they fell in love, hoped for happiness, beat the enemy and returned to the airfield again. And this combination of the daily danger of dying in battle and the passionate desire to survive and be happy gave the picture a special poignancy.
Baranov's portfolio includes several military-themed paintings, and all of them are imbued with the heroism of the Soviet people. They also reflect the realities of that time. As an example - the picture "Moonzund" (1987), where the main roles were played by Oleg Menshikov, Vladimir Gostyukhin, Nikolai Karachentsov, Lyudmila Nilskaya. The film surprisingly combines the desperate courage of decent people and the rudeness of villains who do not want to fulfill their duty to the country and protect it. Director Alexander Muratov was able to plausibly recreate here a picture of the battles on the Baltic Sea in 1915-1917.
In 1985, he also starred in the military film The Feat of Odessa, a drama about sailors who fought against the Nazis who were trying to occupy Odessa. Why feat? Because there were several times more German soldiers than Soviet ones. However, when you defend your native land, you don't think about it - this is the main leitmotif of the film.
In the eighties, Baranov, in addition to working in the theater, starred in a new film almost every year. For example, in 1986 in his portfolio there was a film "Breakthrough" about a major accident that occurred in the Leningrad metro, when it was just being built.
1990 again brought him the main role in the short film Comrade Chkalov's Crossing the North Pole. And the nineties were also successful in terms of the demand for an actor in the cinema.
In the same year he played in the film "Genius", where the main role was played by Alexander Abdulov. This crime comedy has raised a highly relevant topic of talent and destiny. The hero of Abdulov is a talented physicist forced to take the path of crime. Both the mafia and the police are looking for him, but he is talented in order not to get caught by either one or the other. The film received a special prize at the Kinotavr Film Festival. The film also starred celebrities: Innokenty Smoktunovsky, Valentina Talyzina, Yuri Kuznetsov.
In subsequent years, Baranov also starred a lot in feature films and TV series, and he also successfully duplicates foreign films. Which, in fact, became another of his profession.
