From gigolo to leader: the unusual roles of Konstantin Khabensky

If you don’t know, it’s hard to believe: in the animated series Timon and Pumbaa, one of the main characters speaks with the voice of Khabensky! The mongoose Timon jokes jokingly, mocks his friend, Pumbaa the warthog; boastful, cunning and constantly involved in dangerous adventures. And he doesn’t hesitate to buy beetles at someone else’s expense.
You can hear Timon-Khabensky in episodes 1-40 of the first season of the anime series.

Childish, indecisive, but infinitely romantic, handsome Andrey – this is how Khabensky appeared before the audience in the drama of Dmitry Meskhiev. The director himself never considered the film “The Property of Women” particularly successful. But for Konstantin, this role turned out to be important. We can say that it is with the “Property of women” that his status as a future sex symbol began to take shape. After all, not only the heroines of “Women’s Property” were delighted with the contestant Andrei Kalinin. The ladies’ man, who turned out to be a truly loving man, also plunged into the soul and the spectators.
Alas, the role of Kalinin turned out to some extent prophetic for the actor. In the photo, his hero buried his beloved wife who died of cancer, and in life Khabensky also suffered a heavy loss: his first wife Anastasia died of cancer. Otherwise, Konstantin in no way repeated the fate of Andrei Kalinin – the actor was never a reveler-alfonso and did not try to “move on” with the help of women.

In the Russian animated film Urfin Deuce and His Wooden Soldiers, an adaptation of A. Volkov’s fairy tale of the same name, Khabensky voiced the main antagonist. He got the part of the carpenter Urfin, a dark and unsociable man, but cunning and obsessed with power. (Interestingly, Deuce’s main henchman – the General of the Fool Soldiers – was voiced by none other than Sergey Shnurov).
“It’s not the first time that I’ve expressed cartoons, and it amuses me. Especially if the role is small. If it’s big, it’s quite laborious, “the artist confessed at the time. his opinion, Urfin Deuce is a rather ridiculous character who only tries to be a monster, but is actually an unhappy and lonely person.
For this work, Khabensky was nominated for the IV National Animation Award “Icarus”.

Who hasn’t heard that Khabensky once performed with Bekmambetov with Angelina Jolie herself (and James McAvoy – but that’s secondary)? … The episodic role of the Russian killer aiding the main character is widely known, but still atypical for Konstantin Yurievich.
Perhaps because the character turned out to be rather grotesque. What are only his remarks (“Is it vodka?” “Yes”, “Are you Russian?”, “Aha!”), Or strange behavior (running after the national drink, Khabensky the “Fighter” sang the song “Tired toys sleep”).
There’s been a lot of buzz surrounding the scene in which the Russian actor was allegedly kissed by Angelina Jolie. Khabensky himself was puzzled: after all, his heroine Fox simply performed artificial respiration on the suicide bomber, and there was no kiss! “Here is Scottish actor James McAvoy, who played the lead role in it, really kissed Angelina,” the artist has clarified in various interviews.

In Dmitry Meskhiev’s black comedy, which fully reflects the atmosphere of the early 2000s, Khabensky played a special role – a smart and silent trickster … Edik. It is his character who transports a million rubles for the mafia to a diplomat (who then disappears), and it is he who throws the corpse of a neighbor from the compartment out of the window. In general, if you want to see the current national idol in a rather repugnant image, the tragicomic detective Meskhiev will help you.

In the historical drama of the Russian-French production, he got the role of Aron Simanovich, the personal secretary of Rasputin. (Grigory Efimovich himself, we remember, was played by Gérard Depardieu).
Khabensky embodied on the screen a rather controversial historical figure: merchant and loan shark, owner of gambling houses, Simanovich was also a memoirist. But historians question the authenticity of his memoirs. For example, scientist GZ Ioffe called Simanovich a “thug” and publicist SV Fomin called the memories he left about Rasputin “through and through false.”
Audiences weren’t thrilled with the on-screen Simanovich either. But, judging by the reviews, it is not the actor who played him who is “guilty”, but the creators of the tape themselves. The character has not been revealed. “I didn’t understand at all what Khabensky was doing in the film, and why his hero was needed,” says a typical review.

The personality of one of the leaders of the Russian revolution in no way attracted the actor. Konstantin spoke about it himself, while admitting that “he is a major figure of the past century”. Therefore, the miniseries by Alexander Kott and Konstantin Statsky demonstrates a non-standard and very subjective view of this figure.
Khabensky played Trotsky at different years: very young and already old. According to him, it was not difficult to transform into a 60-year-old immigrant with the help of makeup. It is much more difficult to appear as a young revolutionary, “to try to exist in a state of youthful maximalism”. However, the artist managed to solve this problem by portraying Trotsky in various guises: a young, cub-looking boy and a tall, dangerous politician with an infernal charisma.

One of the very first roles of Konstantin – Ferenc in the Hungarian-Russian film “Natasha” (Natasa). In a little-known picture, a graduate of LGITMiK played a Hungarian student who begins an affair with a Moscow girl Natasha and at the same time finds a friend in her brother Sergei. Little by little, the Hungarian suspects that the guy and the girl are rather lovers, and besides, they perform strange shamanic rites…
Still quite young and inexperienced, Khabensky managed to show off his talent in this arthouse crime novel. Even then, critics and viewers guessed a powerful potential in the performer of the role of Ferenc.

Alas, the scenes with Khabensky were never included in the final version of the horror World War Z – by the way, the highest-grossing film of Brad Pitt’s career. However, our compatriot has done his job, period. He played (and we don’t doubt it brilliantly) a Russian fighter helping Pitt’s hero destroy zombies in Moscow.
Khabensky spent two months in Budapest, where they were filming. He advised the producer to change the image of Russians to “less popular” than depicted in the script. The opinion of the Russian actor was listened to. “Everything turned out, they found a lot and very wisely. And suddenly they cut everything … “- Konstantin later said in an interview with Yuri Dudyu.
However, fans still have a glimmer of hope that the filmed scenes from “Moscow” will be shown in the “War of the Worlds Z” sequel. In the meantime, Khabensky will crush the undead only in our imaginations. But there are rumors that the episodes were cut due to their increased gore, so everything must have looked awesome.