“Nude” is a very serious test “: how Elena Kondulainen lives now

In the summer of 2020, Elena suddenly lost consciousness. At the buffet table after the closing of the season with colleagues from the Theater of the Moon, the actress was struck by a stroke. The first signs of emergency hospitalization were blurred consciousness and hallucinations of a 62-year-old woman. Elena’s pressure at that time was – 220 to 120. The artist spent about a month in the hospital. The actress hoped that a week or two would pass and everything would be restored. “I’m used to the intensity of life, I’m not used to being sick for a long time. I have completely changed, now I fall asleep at eight in the evening, I turn off the phone. After a stroke, I can’t listen to either the phone or the TV – all sounds drive me crazy, ”Elena admitted in one of her fresh interviews with Lera Kudryavtseva. The rehabilitation of the sex symbol of Soviet cinema took two years. All cares about Elena were taken over by her sons. Elena had problems with speech, she could not move independently, could not coordinate movements and began to lose weight rapidly. In addition, the actress, while in the clinic, fell in the shower, which led to a broken arm.

“Elena had a serious stroke, but she is a fighter, she recovered well and returned to us the same beauty,” writer Maria Arbatova shares in an interview with MK. “The talk about her being a champagne drinker is a fabrication. In all my years of dating, I have never seen her interested in this topic. Together we were at the ecological film festival “Cinemarina” in Turkey in the most expensive hotel in the country at that time, where it was not just all-inclusive, but such that vacationers did not reach the beach in the morning, hanging out in bars, and the main task of the animators was to take away they have children so they don’t drown. Lena and I sat on the beach and drank juice. And she didn’t “star” at all there, didn’t attract attention to herself, although licking men walked in crowds around her.

Arbatova noted: She is one of the actresses who monitor weight, beauty, and health. It seems to me that she simply cannot leave the house untidy, undressed and not extravagant.

“After a stroke, people have a lot of work to do. And he shows exactly those qualities of character that a person had before a stroke. A stroke breaks psychologically for many, they cannot accept new ones, hide and think “let them remember me that one”. Among my friends, unfortunately, there are those, – continues Arbatova. – And Lena Kondulainen is a very strong person who returned to duty. We just met with her – I am after knee surgery, she is after rehabilitation from a stroke. And she admitted to me that she refused the services of a housekeeper – and not because she had no money, but simply decided to do everything herself in order to recover faster. This is very correct. I tell her, but my husband and son take care of me so much that if I lived alone, I would have been jumping without a crutch for a long time. I know too much about a stroke: my father died of a stroke, my mother was pulled out after a stroke with almost no consequences, my ex-husband also had a stroke, and I have been in his ward for almost two months. There you can see with the naked eye who will then get on their feet and who will not. For example, in front of my eyes, the wife dragged food from the forbidden list to her stroke husband at his request: salted, smoked, etc. There were simulators in the department, but people were too lazy to approach them, they were more worried about where they could smoke. And Lena Kondulainen after the illness, in principle, refused salt. That is, she has outlined a tough recovery program for herself and is fulfilling it with Finnish perseverance.

– Rate the talent of the actress Kondulainen on a ten-point scale.

– She was an absolute star in her genre – a sex diva! Elena’s success as an actress Kondulainen during the 90s, I would rate 10/10. In Hollywood, she would have become a millionaire, but here in Moscow she only has a three-room apartment on Khodynka field. And all her wealth is her dresses. She has an insane amount of dresses. And she always said that she didn’t wear a dress more than once. And even to the shooting, where I saw her, she came in a golden dress with frills, in transparent black gloves and on Louboutins. In short, a picture!

Despite the fact that she had many husbands and lovers, and it seemed to everyone that she was a frivolous blonde, Lena raised beautiful sons who took all the care of their sick mother. They hid her from prying eyes, because Lena did not want to appear weak. And they dragged it on themselves for a long, long time, because restoration is also a very expensive thing. But we are constantly faced with the situation of well-known artists abandoned by their close ones, who are taken care of by theater and cinema funds.

In the acting environment, everyone considers themselves underestimated. But Elena Kondulainen is still well-known, although there have not been any high-profile films with her participation recently. In a sense, she is a unique phenomenon: a sex symbol, actress, singer, personality.

Even then she was not afraid of frank scenes, and “nudity” is a very serious test. In today’s cinematography, only the lazy did not appear naked, but the point here is not only a good figure, but also internal self-sufficiency and external organics. There are a lot of actresses with a good figure, but they don’t look interesting on the screen because they are squeezed. And Kondulainen, indeed, is the Venus de Milo, who came out of the foam, and the camera loves her and enhances her attractiveness. Elena is always presented as a stealer of hearts, but she is not a shark at all, but a person with very thin skin, naive, childishly trusting, touching and vulnerable. And in my opinion, a very good person.

– How did the stroke turn out for Kondulainen?

– Any stroke is a big loss of strength, it’s a huge stress, it’s high anxiety. But Lena got up, dressed up, put on makeup, goes out, takes part in television shootings. Of course, he gets tired, and will continue treatment-recovery for a long time. And then he will completely forget about these difficult years and join in a normal life. It is important that everything is in order with her self-esteem, Elena now understands that she is not only a wonderful actress, a beautiful woman, but also a terrible disease that kills even young people. And therefore, it should be shown more often so that people do not give up after a stroke, and remember that the main thing in recovery is a fighting character. But speaking of Elena Kondulinen, it is important to remember that, being our sex symbol, our Marilyn Monroe, she created in 1993 not the Sex Party, but the Love Party, because love is the main thing in her life.

Recall that Elena Kondulainen has been on the staff of the Theater of the Moon for many years. She was married four times. She has two adult sons and grandchildren. After the picture “One Hundred Days Before the Order” in which Elena was completely naked on the screen, Kondulainen was assigned the title of the sex symbol of the USSR. Among the 50 films with the participation of the actress, film critics note “Daphnis and Chloe”, “Down House”, “St. John’s Wort”, “Friendship of Peoples” and “Womanizer”.