Lydia Shtykan is a Soviet actress who performed on the stage of the Alexandrinsky Theater (Leningrad) for several decades. In addition, she played about forty movie roles. In 1967, Lydia Shtykan was awarded the title of People's Artist of the RSFSR. This actress was distinguished by a unique feminine charm and ability to play well almost any character role.
Early years and participation in the Great Patriotic War
Lydia Petrovna Shtykan was born in June 1922 in St. Petersburg (then this city was called Petrograd). From early childhood, Lydia liked the theater, from the age of ten she attended performances with her parents. She also collected postcards with popular theater actresses of those years.
Lydia's parents were ordinary workers, and her daughter's hobby for the theater was not considered something too serious. However, this did not prevent her from passing exams in 1940 and becoming a student at the prestigious Leningrad Theater Institute. In her first year, she studied at the studio of the director and teacher Nikolai Serebryakov. Then Hitlerite Germany attacked the USSR, and their studies had to be interrupted. Lydia Shtykan voluntarily went to the front and acted as a nurse in the 268th Infantry Division. In 1943 she was awarded the medal "For the Defense of Leningrad".
Only after the end of the Great Patriotic War, she recovered at the institute and continued her education. But now she got on the course to the actor Vasily Merkuryev. In addition, the famous theater director Leonid Vivienne was among her teachers. And when Lydia Shtykan graduated from the institute (this happened in 1948), it was Vivien who invited her to work at the Alexandrinsky Theater.
However, the debut role of Shtykan on the stage of this theater (a role in a production based on Schiller's play "Treachery and Love") was not successful. On the contrary, critics wrote that the actress failed to correctly understand the character of her heroine, Louise Miller.
The role in the play "Years of Wanderings" turned out to be very important for Lydia's career - here she played Lyusya Vedernikova. Shtykan worked a lot on this role and ultimately managed to make Luda the most memorable character. The actress was brilliantly able to show how a frivolous, funny girl, having gone through certain tests, becomes a serious person. And the audience loved this character very much. But the author of the literary basis - playwright Alexei Arbuzov - was unhappy with the way Shtykan played Lyusya. He believed that his character at the end should be the same as at the beginning.
Another significant success of Lydia Petrovna was her participation in the play "The Gambler" (based on Dostoevsky's novel) in 1956. Here she played the role of Mademoiselle Blanche - a practical French woman who is obsessed with money and manipulates men for her own benefit.
You can list a few more famous theatrical roles of Lydia Shtykan - Marina Mnishek in Boris Godunov, Lady Tizl in the School of Scandal, Nadezhda in Leonid Zorin's play Friends and Years, Countess Shekhovskaya in The Life of Saint-Exupery, etc. e. Creative achievements (primarily on the theater stage) allowed Lydia Petrovna to become an Honored Artist of the RSFSR in 1958, and nine years later she was finally awarded the title of People's Artist.
Lydia Shtykan in the cinema
The debut of Lydia Shtykan in cinema happened during the war years. In 1944, she played in the drama "Once upon a time there was a girl", dedicated to life in besieged Leningrad. But after that she had a chance to act in films again only 5 years later - in the black-and-white film of 1949 "Konstantin Zaslonov".
The following year, 1950, Lydia Shtykan played Alexandra Purgold in the biographical film Mussorgsky directed by Grigory Roshal. And this, in fact, is one of her most striking works in Soviet cinema.
In 1954, she starred in the film "You and I met somewhere."The main role in it is played by Arkady Raikin, and Lydia Shtykan appears here in only one short scene. She is a telegraph operator at the post office who gives Raikin's character money so that he can take a photo in a photo studio.
In 1967, Lydia Shtykan perfectly embodied the image of the discerning writer Vera Turkina in the film "In the City of S.", shot by Joseph Kheifits based on the story of Anton Chekhov.
In 1971 she played the mother of the main character - the librarian Vera Kasatkina - in the film "Cold - Hot".
In 1975, in the film almanac "A Step Towards", she appeared as a supermarket worker.
In general, Lydia Shtykan starred in about forty films. At the same time, she always considered her main vocation to be work in the theater.
Personal life
Lydia's only great love was Nikolai Boyarsky, an artist of the Komissarzhevskaya Theater. They met each other while studying at the university. Like Lydia, Nikolai went to the front in 1941, and only in 1945, after the Victory, young people were able to formalize their relationship. The couple lived in a happy marriage for about 37 years, and Lydia gave birth to two children from Nicholas - a son, Oleg, and a daughter, Catherine.
When Catherine grew up, she became a professional theater critic and wrote a book about the Boyarsky acting dynasty. The names of many representatives of this dynasty are known to almost everyone in the country. Nikolai Boyarsky, the husband of Lydia Shtykan, is the brother of another Soviet actor, Alexander Boyarsky. And two sons of Alexander - Sergei and Mikhail - followed in the footsteps of their father and uncle, that is, they also became actors. Today, of course, Mikhail Boyarsky, who plays the leading role in the Soviet adventure television film D'Artanyan and the Three Musketeers, is especially popular. And Mikhail, as many people know, has a daughter, Liza, who also often acts in films (for example, she starred in the 2007 film "The Irony of Fate. Continuation").
Circumstances of death
Lydia Shtykan really adored the acting profession and until her last days went on the stage to delight the audience. On June 11, 1982, during the stay of the Alexandrinsky Theater troupe in Perm, her heart suddenly stopped beating. The actress at that time was only 59 years old. The place of her burial was the cemetery in the village of Komarovo, which is near Leningrad.
Lydia's husband Nikolai Boyarsky died six years later, in 1988. He was buried in the same cemetery, next to his beloved wife.
