People's Artist of the USSR Igor Leonidovich Kirillov - announcer from God, whose voice was heard by all residents of the Soviet Union for about half a century
Igor was born in 1932 in Moscow. His father was a military man, his mother was a librarian. An intelligent family raised a love of art in his son, and he decided to connect his life with theater and cinema. True, he did not suspect that he would become an announcer on television, because he dreamed of becoming a director.
After school, Igor entered VGIK for directing, then moved to the school named after Shchepkin and graduated from the acting department there. After college I went to work on television - it was very prestigious. Igor wanted to become a television director, but when he heard about the announcers' competition, he decided to try it “for fun”.
What was everyone’s surprise when yesterday’s Sliver student won this contest! For Igor Leonidovich, this date - September 27, 1957 - was the second birthday. In two hours, the director Sergey Zakharov taught the beginner the elementary skills of the host and released Kirillov live.
He still remembers the next with difficulty - he only remembers that his legs gave way, and everything was as if in a fog. But the first broadcast went great.
TV announcer
Igor Kirillov spent more than thirty years as the host of the Vremya program, the main news program of the Soviet Union. The leadership changed, decades replaced each other, and only Igor Kirillov with his beautiful voice invariably told the inhabitants of the Soviet Union about the main news of the country.
There were very strict rules on television, and for the slightest offense they could be temporarily removed from the air or fired. But Kirillov was always impeccable, and worked all the time almost without comment.
He also remembers his last appearance on television - it was the New Year’s news release at the end of December 1989.
From 1968 to 1989, he was not only the head of the announcer’s department of Channel One, but also hosted many other programs: Television Viewer Satellite, Telescope, Bookplate, Glance.
Igor Leonidovich’s artistic abilities came in handy in the television program “Blue Light”, which they led with Anna Shilova. He was an entertainer at concerts, his voice voiced mourning ceremonies from the funeral of the heads of state, as well as broadcasting parades from Red Square. And very often he made a festive speech on the air before the New Year.
The beginning of the new century did not make Kirillov unemployed: he starred in films, taught at the Institute for Advanced Studies of Radio and Television Employees, and continued to work on television, appearing in many television programs.
