Witnesses of two centuries: longtime Soviet actresses who are already over 90 years old

Lyudmila Khityaeva graduated from theater school in 1952 and soon began acting in films. She made her debut immediately in the title role of the film “Ekaterina Voronina”, then the legendary Sergei Gerasimov invited her to shoot at home in “Quiet Don”. In Sholokhov’s film adaptation, Khityaeva played the role of Pyotr Melekhov’s wife, Daria.

However, to a wide audience, the actress was perhaps best known for the characteristic, mischievous role of Solokha in the film Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka. Khityaeva has been on the screen for more than half a century, and not only as an actress – already in the 2010s she tried herself as a TV presenter.

The life of such a spectacular actress was also full of love passions. As a student, she had an affair with Evgeny Evstigneev. She was married three times, the last family union, however, was not registered, then Khityaeva completely found a new wife for her fiancé, so that she gave birth to a child for him.

“I already had a child, and due to my age, I could not give him children with all my desire. He was also over 50 years old. And I was able to convey to him the idea that a nobody is happier when they have their own children,” the actress said.

In 2022, shortly before her birthday, Khityaeva fell at home and ended up in the hospital, but, fortunately for her fans, the actress recovered from her injury.

The star of the Satire Theater always amazes the audience with her youth and elegant appearance. The actress came to the cinema in 1945 – a student of the theater school was invited to play a role in the film “Twins”. The large-scale debut of Vera Vasilyeva took place in 1947, when she played Nastya Gusenkova in Ivan Pyryev’s film The Legend of the Siberian Land. For this work, the young artist received the most prestigious award of that time – the Stalin Prize.

In 1948, Vasilyeva was enrolled in the troupe of the Theater of Satire and spent her entire creative life on this stage.

In love, Vera Kuzminichna was also loyal to a chosen one. Since 1956 she has been married to Vladimir Ushakov, they had no children, and in 2011 Vasilyeva was widowed.

The actress always takes the stage and invariably breaks the applause, because her energy at such a respectable age can only be envied.

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Lyudmila Arinina is well known to several generations of Soviet viewers, although she came to the cinema relatively late – after graduating as an actress in 1948, she appeared on the screen only in 1967, before shine on the stage of provincial theaters.

There are hundreds of roles in her filmography, and although there are not so many main ones, the viewer has always remembered this quick-witted actress. The old Soviet generation loved her for her roles in the films “Mom Got Married” and “Belarusian Station”, and the pioneers knew her as the grandmother of Yulia Gribkova from the TV series “Guest from the Future”. After the role of Yulia Dmitrievna in the TV movie “For the rest of my life”, Arinina developed the role of a lonely woman with a “difficult fate”, but at the same time she was a master of the comic genre.

The actress married three times, but did not give birth to children. At the same time, she found her last love when she was over 60 years old. After the death of her second husband, she no longer thinks about her personal life, but in 1989 she meets Lieutenant Colonel Nikolai Semenov, who also experiences the death of his wife. Already middle-aged lovers have decided to get married and are still happy together.

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