Honoured Artist of the Soviet Union, Laureate of the State Prize of the Russian Federation

30.09. 1917  – 5.10.2014

Yury Petrovich Lyubimov was born 30 September, 1917 in Yaroslavl.

In 1934 he entered the Second Moscow Art Theatre Studio where later he played his first role (Jacques Duval’s Pleading for Life).

Two years later he entered the Drama School of The Vakhtangov Theatre where he had several roles as a student. Lyubimov played with Boris Shukin in The Man With a Gun (1937). In 1940 he graduated from the Theatre Institute and joined the army where in 1941-1946 he worked in the NKVD Arts Ensemble. Later he worked at The Vakhtangov Theatre, and was its leading performing artist (1946-1964).

Lyubimov’s first directing experience took place in 1959 when he staged Alexander Galich’s How Much Does a Man Need. In 1963, as a third-year student, Galich staged together with the students of The Shukin Theatre Institute Bertolt Brecht’s The Good Person of Szechwan. This play marked the history of the Lubimov’s Taganka Theatre. Lyubimov left the Theatre in 2011 and in the present time is working with The Vakhtangov Theatre on Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed.