Karen Shakhnazarov is a famous talented director who won over many viewers with his unforgettable films, including "Winter Evening in Gagra" and "We are from jazz". Unfortunately, at the moment he has no family: all three spouses divorced him. The last wife of Karen Shakhnazarov, actress Daria Mayorova, gave the director two sons, but she also left him in 2001.
The first wife of Karen Shakhnazarov
Karen Georgievich Shakhnazarov devoted his life to his beloved work - cinema, and in this sense he can be called a happy person. In one of his interviews with journalists, the elderly director once frankly admitted that his family life was not successful.
The spouses of Karen Georgievich could not stand the frantic rhythm in which the director, screenwriter, producer, and later the general director of Mosfilm lived. In addition, Shakhnazarov was actively involved and continues to engage in social activities.
The first wife of Karen Shakhnazarov, the beautiful Elena, only managed to graduate from the Faculty of History. Her romance with the young director, who had already managed to shoot the first picture, was impetuous. The young people confronted their parents with a fact, played a magnificent wedding, began to live with her parents, then with him, rented rooms.
However, love could not stand the test of everyday life, and after six months the couple broke up. Subsequently, Karen Georgievich no longer arranged weddings, he managed to register marriages without unnecessary ceremony. This couple did not have children.
Second attempt at happiness
The second wife of Karen Shakhnazarov was also called Elena. She was the daughter of TASS correspondent Nikolai Setunsky, later the adopted daughter of the Russian and Israeli writer Anatoly Aleksin, whom her mother Tatyana Feinberg remarried.
Elena grew up among writers and journalists, so her fate was determined - she herself graduated from the Faculty of Journalism of Moscow State University in 1983. At the same time, she met Shakhnazarov. By the time she graduated from university, she had already managed to be married and divorced.
As Karen Georgievich said in one of his interviews, he immediately fell in love with the bright beauty Elena Setunskaya, whom he met in the company of acquaintances, and married her after a couple of months.
At that time, Karen Shakhnazarov was over thirty, he dreamed of a normal family and children. The couple had a child - a girl, named Anna in honor of the mother of Karen Georgievich, Anna Grigorievna.
According to the director's own recollections, there were quarrels and reconciliation in the family, life flowed in its usual rhythm, but the happiness of an eternally busy husband and father collapsed completely unexpectedly for him.
While Shakhnazarov was flying to the Cannes Film Festival, his wife simply fled from him to the United States under the pretext that she wanted to show her daughter Disneyland. But she never returned to the director, hid from him. Although he won the right to raise Ani in court, it was unrealistic to find a daughter in America and take her out of there.
The father saw his long-grown girl only after two dozen children. And the second wife of Karen Shakhnazarov remarried the American producer Mark Zadner and became known as Alena Zadner. Based on his own family drama, the filmmaker shot the film "American Daughter".
Film director and actress
During the filming, which took place in the city of Vladimir, Karen Grigorievich accidentally met a student of the Shchukin school, Daria Mayorova, and fell in love again at first sight. He managed to maintain a home with this woman longer than with previous wives, although the husband and wife had a 20-year age difference.
Acquaintance with the famous director became the young actress's ticket to the big cinema. She was offered a role in The Regicide when she was only a sophomore. However, having starred in some more films, Daria Mayorova decided to leave filming in the cinema and not play on the theatrical stage, but choose a job as a TV host, and devote herself to her family in her free time.
The third wife of Karen Shakhnazarov gave her husband two sons - Ivan and Vasily. The elder followed in his father's footsteps, becoming a director and screenwriter. Unfortunately, the couple were unable to maintain their relationship and broke up in 2001. The former spouses managed to make the collapse of the family not painful for their joint sons. The parents behaved so carefully and tactfully that the children did not even immediately guess about their divorce.
Children of Karen Shakhnazarov
The American daughter of Karen Grigorievich herself found her father two decades after the day when her mother, secretly from her husband, took her abroad. According to Shakhnazarov, the daughter first learned from him the second, paternal, point of view on the divorce from Elena Setunskaya. He told how, returning from the Cannes Film Festival, he saw the dark windows of his painting and suddenly realized with clarity and melancholy that he would not see his daughter for a long time.
Anna Karenovna works in the advertising business, owns her own firm and collaborates with Hollywood directors. Although she has long lost the habit of her biological father, they strive to get to know each other better and sometimes communicate. According to Karen Georgievich, his American daughter does not speak Russian well.
The film director is constantly present in the life of his sons from Daria Mayorova. The children even went on business trips with him, and spent their holidays together. An intelligent mother did not build and does not build obstacles to meetings between father and sons.
As it follows from the conversations of Karen Grigorievich with journalists, with age he understood a lot and saw in a new light. He realizes that the main passion of his life was cinema, and perhaps his wives lacked the feeling that part of his soul also belongs to them. One way or another, the talented director presented the audience with memorable, vivid pictures, continues to give love to his heirs, although he himself was disappointed in love.
