The range of roles played by Vladimir Etush, one of the most famous Russian comedy actors, is incredibly wide: from fairy tale czars to fakirs and petty tricksters.

Actor Yuri Yakovlev came to be a favourite of many-millioned Russian public and of highly cultured audience of Evgeny Vakhtangov Moscow Theatre. In the 1960-70s his characters, among them Lieutenant Rzhevsky, Ivan Vasilievich and Ippolit naturally continued people’s folklore: entire country got infected with his intonations and catchy words and phrases.

Nonna Mordyukova was one of the most popular actresses of Soviet Russian cinema; a bright, integral and whole-hearted person, she stands out as a symbolic figure in modern Russian cinema art. In her roles she incarnated the best features of whole generations of strong Russian women. Her partners were the best actors of the Soviet period, among them Vasili Shukshin, Yuri Nikulin, Valentin Zubkov, Mikhail Ulyanov and others.

Karen Shakhnazarov is one of the leading Russian cinema masters endowed with a peculiar talent. The pictures created by the film director and scriptwriter are quite versatile in dramatic concepts and author’s messages; following traditions of genre cinema they all have distinct plotlines and explicit relations of the characters.

Actor Vyacheslav Tikhonov personifies a whole epoch. In the dull years of Soviet Stagnation he contrived to create a real hero on screen. Having played fifty-odd film roles throughout over half a century of being in filming, Vyacheslav Tikhonov still remains first of all the charming and noble, determined and strong-willed secret agent Stirlitz for viewers.

He is one of the few people in the world that has been mentioned in the Big Soviet Encyclopedia not under his real name and surname but under his pseudonym…Karandash, alias the People Artist of the USSR Mikhail Rumyantsev, a world famous clown.

Film director Igor Maslennikov is renowned as the author of one of the best screen versions of Sherlock Holmes stories. His popularity was also supported by success of the drama Winter Cherries. However, the director’s filmography numbers almost thirty serious and profound works in various genres.

Legendary Faina Ranevskaya (1896–1984) went down in history as the most eccentric actress of Russian cinema of the Soviet epoch. A creator of whole gallery of inimitable farcical characters, a philosopher with a cigarette, a scandalous persona, a caustic lady, and a sensitive person – all this was Faina Ranevskaya. Much has been written about her, whereas her witty aphorisms and gags remain popular till date.

Boris Stepantsev was one of the best directors of Russian animation of the Soviet era. Everyone in Russia cannot but remember and enjoy his eternal animated cartoon masterpieces about Carlson, Vovka in the Far Far Away Kingdom and the Nutcracker.

The Russian ballet missed a few generations of evolution in European choreography and lacked fresh dance ideas. At the same time the masterly performance level of the Russian ballet school was kept up well. After 1991 domestic ballet resorted to assimilating the experience of the Western ballet in the field of dance modern, jazz, and free dance.

Apart from the actor’s talent Vasily Livanov is gifted in other ways as well: as a scriptwriter, a film director, a writer and an artist. Many cult personages of classical Russian animated cartoon films speak with his voice. Yet, Livanov’s most legendary film role is that of Sherlock Holmes in the film series about the famous detective – even British critics called this image one of the best cinematic portrayals of this popular character of Arthur Conan Doyle.

She was the first and the brightest, and remains the only true star of the Russian silent cinema. Though Vera Kholodnaya was into filming for only three years, it was enough for her to become the Queen of Screen, as she was titled. Unluckily, only five films starring her are extant nowadays out of the fifty to eighty films she played in.

Mikhail Zharov played all his splendid roles so long ago that it seems he must have probably fallen into oblivion already, yet he is still remembered and beloved. He was unique and incomparable; his characters played with detailed psychological verisimilitude and at the same time with harum-scarum humour, smartness and expanse remain alive and vigorous.

Innokentiy Smoktunovsky who excelled in the extraordinarily subtle play of Hamlet and Prince Myshkin enjoyed utmost popularity among the viewers and praises of critics. Few people could boast such loud fame that fell to the actor’s lot in the 1960s.

Nikolai Burlyayev is a person endowed with a wide range of talents; he is well-known as an actor, film director, scriptwriter, and a public figure. First time appearing on screen as a slim and frail teenager in Tarkovsky’s drama film Ivan's Childhood he at once came to be a mature actor in great demand.

There is no need to prove that Inna Churikova is a great actress: somewhat eccentric, frankly ungainly and queerly fearless. What other actress, besides her and the legendary Faina Ranevskaya, could be so aweless about looking ugly or funny on screen, as she was? Though endowed with a bright comic gift, she became a genius tragic actress.

Mikhail Kononov was one of the most brilliant Russian film actors. His characters were as a rule kind, naive and always charming. In all of his roles, both big and small, the actor appeared infinitely truthful.

Anatoli Papanov (1922-1987) was an actor of unique gift. With equal elegance he coped with quite different roles, like the comic one of Lyolik in The Diamond Arm (1968) and dramatic one of the General Serpilin in The Alive and the Dead (1964). His characters were fated to become favourites of the public, while their phrases turned winged. He was kindred to everyone.

The Great Andrei Mironov... Thanks to his films and his friends’ memoirs he became a kind of collective image of the ideal actor possessing the power over all genres in cinema and theatre. Yet, what is probably more important, Andrei Mironov was an amazingly radiant personality on stage and on screen.

Oleg Dal was one of the brightest and the most contradictive figures of the Soviet theatre and cinema. Merry and withdrawn, unprotected and haughty, he never got a title of honour and did not live long enough to do everything he could. Yet he was a true Actor. Oleg Dal acted brilliantly in a wide range of films, from classics to fairy tales and adventures.