Sergey Kolesnikov: three times Moscow Art Theater student, voice of James Bond, loving husband and father

There will be no civil memorial service – this is how the family of a popular actor and TV presenter decided

On May 2, actor and TV presenter Sergei Kolesnikov is being carried out at the Troekurovsky cemetery. He died on April 29 at the age of 69 after a stroke.

Sergei Kolesnikov can be called a member of the Moscow Art Theater three times. A graduate of the Moscow Art Theater School (studied on the course of Sofya Pilyavskaya and Vladimir Bogomolov), he worked at the Moscow Art Theater. After its division in 1987, he ended up at the Gorky Moscow Art Theater under the direction of Tatyana Doronina. In 1990 he moved to the Chekhov Moscow Art Theater.

The section was “bloody”, walked through the acting fate severely. All this had to be experienced. For more than thirty years in the theater, Sergei has played roles that actors can only dream of. These are Glumov (“There is Enough Simplicity for Every Wise Man”), Vaska Pepel (“At the Bottom”), Count Gloucester (“King Lear”, Nozdryov (“Dead Souls”), Skalozub (“Woe from Wit”), Lagrange (“Kabala saint”)…

And it all ended with the fact that in 2011 he was fired in the midst of rehearsals for the play “The Master and Margarita”, which was staged by the Hungarian director Janos Sas. Sergey was supposed to play Levi Matvey. But as his colleagues recall, he had to leave for shooting, and few directors will like this.

Oleg Tabakov, who then headed the Moscow Art Theater, decided to replace him with another actor, and then did not renew the contract with him. Kolesnikov said that he had enough things to do, he had to work actively on the Fazenda program, but he could not help but worry about what had happened. After a while, I had to leave the popular TV program, where for several years he told viewers about how to equip a garden plot and a summer house, he did it artistically and easily, at crazy speed, but very intelligently. In general, he was an intelligent and subtle person, which distinguished him from many colleagues. And the son Ivan Kolesnikov, who became an actor, inherited his father’s traits.

It seemed that Sergei Kolesnikov never lost heart, under any circumstances remained cheerful and friendly. That is why they liked to invite him to festivals. Back in March, he visited Tobolsk at the Alafeiskaya Gora festival of modern and contemporary cinema.

He starred a lot, most recently in serials. His filmography includes various films and roles: “Little Things in Life”, “Petersburg Secrets”, “Private Life of Dr. Selivanova”, “Big Top Show”, “The Case of Dead Souls” (Pavel Lungin invited him to the role of Derzhimorda, who else this could come to mind), “Tsar Ivan the Terrible”, “Lyudmila Gurchenko”, “Black Sea”, “Heart of Parma”.

A separate line – the Hollywood blockbuster “Die Hard. A good day to die, ”where he played a Russian hero. He was talented in dubbing. The voice had a rich intonation, voiced in Sean Connery’s James Bond films. One of his last works is in the series “Fire Zhora” by Marius Weisberg, work on which is still ongoing, and where Danila Kozlovsky and Mikhail Galustyan became his partners.

We met at the TV festival named after Valentina Leontyeva in Ulyanovsk, where Sergei arrived with his son, actor of the Mayakovsky Theater Ivan Kolesnikov, who did not have much time left before a successful film career. They became the center of attraction, not a single gathering could do without them.

Father and son had a marvelous relationship, everyone was envious. Both constantly called Maria Velikanova – his wife and mother. She is an actress in the past, the daughter of the famous artist and architect Alexander Velikanov. Sergey called her Manya. That was the name of her heroine in the film “Almost a funny story” by Pyotr Fomenko.

Maria is an artist, decorator, fashion designer, set designer. They had a wonderful family. Life is so fragile, and it only seems that someone knows how to divert sorrows from themselves, to remain calm. So Sergei Kolesnikov seemed like that.