The internationally acclaimed stage director and teacher of numerous famous Russian actors, Yuri Lyubimov is the Honored Artist of the RSFSR (1954) and the People's Artist of Russia (1992).
Yuri Lyubimov was born in the town of Danilov in the Yaroslavl Region on September 30, 1917.
In 1934 he was admitted to the Moscow Art Theatre-2. This is where the aspiring actor played his first role; it was in the play Prayer for Life written by Jacques Duval. In 1936 Yuri Lyubimov entered the Drama Studio of the Vakhtangov Theater. As a student, he performed a few roles on the stage of the Vakhtangov Theatre.
After graduation in 1940 the actor was drafted into the army, and from 1941 to 1946 served his duty as an actor of the NKVD Song and Dance Ensemble.
From 1946 to 1964 he was the leading actor of the Vakhtangov Theatre, having played more than 30 roles on its stage.
In 1941 Yuri Lyubimov debuted as a film actor in the movie Colorful Novelettes by Macheret.
The year 1959 saw his debut as a stage director: it was Alexander Galich' play Does a Person Need a Lot. Afterwards Yuri Lyubimov attended seminars of the actor and director Mikhail Kedrov, and then became a lecturer at the Shchukin Theatre College.
In 1963, as a 3rd-year student, he staged The Good Person of Szechwan by Bertolt Brecht. This performance involving other students of the Schukin College marked the beginning of the legendary Taganka Theater, which is inseparable from its founder, art director and stage director Yuri Lyubimov.
Over 50 plays, including Hamlet, The Fallen and the Living, Pugachev, The Life of Galileo, Master and Margarita, Boris Godunov, Suicide, Medea, The Chronicles of Shakespeare and Eugene Onegin, were staged by Yuri Lyubimov in the Taganka Theater.
In addition to drama plays, he successfully staged operas in various theaters around the world.
Yuri Lyubimov passed away at the Botkin Hospital in Moscow on October 5, 2014. He laid down to rest at the Donskoy Cemetery in Moscow.