Victoria Parkhomenko told how Vsevolod Shilovsky saves her family

— It all starts from childhood. Did you initially feel drawn to acting? How did it manifest itself?

“I can’t say exactly at what moment such thoughts appeared, but my mother says that at the age of five I announced that I would be an actress and would do charity work. From the age of four, I participated in all the morning performances in kindergarten – I asked myself. She also participated in kindergarten, school, and cultural events. I went to the pioneer camp every year for two shifts and was an active participant in all entertainment programs there.

Then I entered MIIT. There she played in KVN from her first year and became the chairman of the trade union committee. And only after university I consciously went to VGIK to Vsevolod Nikolaevich Shilovsky: I graduated and now I work with him in the theater. Since childhood, I have been drawn to the stage, although there is no one in the family from a creative profession.

— Did your education as an engineer help you develop as an actor?

“I analyzed many times what this gave me, because after all, five years were wasted, and I wanted to understand for myself whether they were wasted or not. Of course, at the age of 22 I thought: “why did I spend these five years, why?” But now I’m 37, and I can say that the only and most valuable thing I acquired during my first education were friends. Of course, it trained my mind, but unfortunately, none of what I was taught at MIIT was useful to me in life. The only thing is that we are only friends with whom we still communicate and support each other.

— Very often, a lot depends on who helps a person and guides him. So, Vsevolod Shilovsky became a guiding star in your life. Can you tell us from what side you personally got to know him, and also how he revealed himself to you from the position of not only a professional, but also a person.

— I’ve been working with Vsevolod Nikolaevich for 15 years. During this time I realized that he is just a human being with a capital “H”, because he has a lot of us. But each of his students at any time of the day or night can call him with some personal problem, and if he can help, he will definitely help. If he can’t, he’ll try.

He teaches us not only skill, he teaches us the ethics of communication with colleagues, with each other. We are all emotional – we need to understand this, so he explains how to deal with it, how to communicate with each other so as not to offend anyone. Because actors are a very dependent people: we depend on directors, on producers, on projects – on everything in the world. It is very important to have some kind of island where you feel safe, where you don’t have to prove anything to anyone, where you enjoy doing your job. We have such an island – this is our theater, and this is entirely the merit of Vsevolod Nikolaevich.

As for professionalism, there’s nothing to even talk about. I think that we were very lucky that we ended up with such a master who was personally acquainted with Massalsky, with Gribov – the list is endless. Professionally, of course, he is much tougher than humanly – and rightly so. He always says this phrase: “Human relationships are one thing. If I see an unprofessional attitude towards a matter, I go wild.”

— Your heroines are from 30 to 80 years old! What helps to penetrate every age? And which one is the most comfortable to work in?

— There are secrets on how to play older women, but the most important thing is life experience. Older characters have a lot of life experience, a lot of pain, a lot of memories, and when you get into this character, you have to connect everything. That’s all that happened in my life. There is no need to play too hard at age. Why? Because people, even at 85 years old, are still young at heart. They are passionate about their work, they have their own dreams. So I compare myself now at 37 and at 18 – the feelings are the same. The only thing is, well, you understand a little more due to experience. And at heart, all the age-old characters are children with their own dreams. And they still want to fulfill them, and this is wonderful, because a person lives when he loves and dreams. All. As soon as this stops, life stops, in principle.

— Is there a role that has become the most expensive or important for you?

— There is one painful role that I tried to play (I touched it a little at the institute, but it didn’t work out for me). This is my assessment that I failed. I played Margarita from the novel “The Master and Margarita”, and it seems to me that it didn’t work out – it turned out that it wasn’t worked out to the end.

Of course, I would still touch her, but I’m scared. Because I’m not sure what will happen: she will be very non-standard in relation to the image that most people have. And this doesn’t make me feel very good. In general, “The Master and Margarita” is my favorite work, which I reread almost every year.

— You have 33 film projects behind you. Tell us, were there moments when it seemed that the heroine was completely absorbed, as if crowding out the personality?

– Was. This happens when an actor works on a role, only creates it, and then it comes very tightly into life. When you think about her very, very much. One of the last such cases was with my grandmother in the play “Eight Loving Women.” Because she is over 80 years old there.

There was a period when I was simply walking along the streets, accidentally saw an elderly woman and began to watch her. After which I tried to copy some behavioral reactions. Even at home she could somehow start to grumble and grumble, although this is generally unusual for me.

— Can you share your immediate plans for cinema and theater?

— There is very little time for cinema now. We are preparing a premiere for May 9: a military-patriotic play based on Alexei Dudarev “Don’t Leave Me.” Amazing stuff. I have a very reverent attitude towards this topic, since the play is about the Great Patriotic War, and my grandfather is a hero of the Soviet Union. Perhaps patriotism is somehow transmitted through blood.