Lydia Shtykan is a Soviet actress who has performed on the stage of the Alexandrinsky Theater (Leningrad) for several decades. In addition, she played about forty roles in the movie. In 1967, Lydia Shtykan was awarded the title of People's Artist of the RSFSR. This actress was distinguished by a unique female charm and the ability to play well almost any characteristic role.
The early years and participation in the Great Patriotic War
Lidia Petrovna Shtykan was born in June 1922 in St. Petersburg (then this city was called Petrograd). From early childhood, Lydia liked the theater, since ten years she attended performances with her parents. And she also collected postcards with popular theater actresses of those years.
Lydia's parents were ordinary workers, and her daughter's fascination with the theater was not considered something too serious. However, this did not stop her from passing exams in 1940 and becoming a student at the prestigious Leningrad Theater Institute. In her first year, she studied in the studio of the director and teacher Nikolai Serebryakov. Then Hitlerite Germany attacked the USSR, and study had to be interrupted. Lydia Shtykan voluntarily went to the front and served as a nurse in the 268th Infantry Division. In 1943 she was awarded the medal "For the Defense of Leningrad."
Only after the end of World War II did she recover at the institute and continued her education. But now she got on a course to actor Vasily Merkuryev. In addition, among her teachers was the famous theater director Leonid Vivien. And when Lydia Shtykan graduated from the institute (this happened in 1948), it was Vivien who invited her to work at the Alexandrinsky Theater.
However, the debut role of Shtykan on the stage of this theater (the role in the production of Schiller’s play "Cunning and Love") was not successful. On the contrary, critics wrote that the actress was unable to correctly understand the character of her heroine - Louise Miller.
Very important for Lydia’s career was the role in the play “Years of Wanderings” - here she played Lyusya Vedernikova. Shtykan worked a lot on this role and ultimately she managed to make Luda the most memorable character. The actress brilliantly was able to show how a frivolous, funny girl, after going through certain tests, becomes a serious person. And the audience was very fond of this character. But the author of the literary basis - playwright Alexei Arbuzov - was unhappy with the way Shtykan played Lyusya. He believed that his character in the end should be the same as in the beginning.
Another significant success of Lydia Petrovna was the participation in the play "Player" (based on the novel by Dostoevsky) in 1956. Here she played the role of Mademoiselle Blanche, a practical Frenchwoman who is obsessed with money and manipulates men for her own benefit.
You can also list several well-known theatrical roles of Lydia Shtykan - Marina Mnishek in Boris Godunov, Lady Tizl in the School of Slander, Nadezhda in Leonid Zorin's play Friends and Years, Countess Shekhovskaya in the production of St. Exupery's Life, and so on. D. Creative achievements (primarily on the stage) allowed Lydia Petrovna in 1958 to become a Honored Artist of the RSFSR, and nine years later she was finally awarded the title of People's Artist.
Lydia Shtykan in the movie
The debut of Lydia Shtykan in cinema happened back in the war years. In 1944, she played in the movie drama "Once Upon a Time", dedicated to life in the besieged Leningrad. But after that she again managed to act in films only 5 years later - in the black-and-white film of 1949 "Konstantin Zaslonov".
The following 1950, Lydia Shtykan played Alexandra Purgold in the biographical film "Mussorgsky" directed by Grigory Roshal. And this, in fact, is one of her most striking works in Soviet cinema.
In 1954, she starred in the movie "We Have Met Somewhere." The main role in it is played by Arkady Raikin, and Lydia Shtykan appears here in only one short scene. She is a telegraph operator in the mail, who gives Raikin’s character money so that he can take a photo in a photo studio.
In 1967, Lydia Shtykan perfectly embodied the image of the insightful writer Vera Turkina in the film "In the City of S.", shot by Joseph Kheifits based on the story of Anton Chekhov.
In 1971, she played the mother of the main character - the librarian Vera Kasatkina - in the film "Cold - Hot."
In 1975, in the film almanac "Step Towards", she appeared in the role of a supermarket employee.
In general, Lydia Shtykan starred in about forty films. However, she always considered her main vocation to work in the theater.
Personal life
Lydia’s only great love was Nikolai Boyarsky, an artist at the Komissarzhevskaya Theater. They met each other while studying at the university. Like Lydia, Nikolai went to the front in 1941, and only in 1945, after the Victory, could young people formally formalize the relationship. The couple lived in a happy marriage for about 37 years, and Lydia gave birth to two children from Nikolai - son Oleg and daughter Ekaterina.
Catherine, when she grew up, became a professional theater expert and wrote a book about the acting Boyarsky dynasty. The names of many representatives of this dynasty are known to almost everyone in the country. Nikolai Boyarsky, husband of Lydia Shtykan, is the brother of yet another Soviet actor Alexander Boyarsky. And the two sons of Alexander - Sergey and Mikhail - followed in the footsteps of their father and uncle, that is, they also became actors. Today, of course, Mikhail Boyarsky, who plays the leading role in the Soviet adventure television movie D'Artagnan and the Three Musketeers, is especially popular. And Mikhail, as many people know, has a daughter, Lisa, who also often acts in films (for example, she starred in the 2007 film "Irony of Fate. Continued").
