She refuses to talk about the personal, but her romance took place in front of everyone in Leviathan and on the red carpet of festivals. The best directors call her to play, and she leaves a place in life for love, sex and cooking. In the screen image, she rarely smiles, but at our photo shoot she had fun and beamed. Meeting with Elena Lyadova, who wants to grow up – in a spiritual sense.
The right place is important for the interview. The most convenient thing is something isolated – an apartment, a room in a hotel, an office or a dressing room. Lena, having suggested a café at the Patriarch’s, easily agrees to the more remote Cinema House, where the silence of the dead season reigns. We sit at a table in a non-working buffet, and for the first time after a long acquaintance on the Oka and fleeting intersections at festivals, I get the opportunity to consider it. I notice that from a groovy girl my interlocutor has turned into an open young woman, in whose life a lot has already happened. But she does not speak and look like an actress on the crest of success, who has harvested a harvest of prestigious awards, to which this year was added the Silver George of the Moscow International Film Festival for the main role in Orleans. A girl from Odintsovo near Moscow, who shone at Cannes, a student unmistakably chosen by director Alexei Uchitel for one of the main roles in Cosmos as a Premonition, a young woman demonstrating such inner energy that in Leviathan there is even a raging sea, even an electrified partner Alexei Serebryakov they can’t distract the viewer’s gaze from her … I press the recorder button. Lenin’s speech is emotional, impetuous, when the thought is ahead of the word, and the smile appears before the joke, it is difficult to record. Returning home, to my complete horror, I find confirmation of this observation: my dictaphone did not save a single word and pretends that there was no conversation. In a panic, I call Lena and get an agreement for a new date in a few days. The second conversation doesn’t go as well as the first, but the recording is fine. Looking over the transcript of the text, I understand that the failure of the recorder was a sign of providence: it wished us to pay more attention to it. But my first question is about how she still manages to be a person in a role, and not a role function in someone else’s plan.
Read more:
- Elena, beautiful and terrible
Psychologies: Lena, it seems to me that there are more of you as a person in your roles than it is customary for actors who simply perform the tasks of a director. Here in “Elena” your heroine asks the heroine Markina: “How are we going to pull the hut?” Admit it, you came up with this phrase?
Elena Lyadova: Yes, it was an improvisation from scratch. Empty in the sense that there was nothing of the kind in the text. My gut told me that I needed to express my heroine’s attitude to what happened. “Derbanit” is a dot that means: “I understand everything with you.” Everyone laughed, and the line entered the film.
Do you understand what happened to your heroine in Leviathan – was she killed by order of the mayor to blame the hero, or did she commit suicide? When I asked the director Zvyagintsev about this, he said that he intentionally did not put an end to the i.
EL: Correct position! But it seems to me, if you reconsider the picture, it becomes clear that this is suicide. But it wasn’t even discussed. Andrei asked me to go to the cliff and look at the ocean. And I had to fill this frame with what I consider necessary – disappointment in life, a curse or forgiveness.
What do you think is the reason for the suicide?
EL: incompatibility with this world. With injustice, with cruelty, with dislike, with everything vile in human nature. In my opinion, she is a person of crystal purity.
Which is not obscured by the violation of fidelity to her husband, who has fallen into a difficult situation? And then, did she really not guess who would be blamed for her death?
EL: I don’t see anything wrong with this. This is not treason, not betrayal, but the last attempt of the soul to find refuge. That her husband would be blamed for her death, it could not even occur to her – due to the same purity.
Read more:
- The unconscious laughs at the mind
And who is to blame for the fact that you had the idea to become an actress?
EL: At first I dreamed of “going to TV”: I really liked the weather forecasters. I also wanted to drive clouds, rule cyclones, send rains and thunderstorms. And I liked the sign language interpreters – it seemed that they convey some secret knowledge in a secret cipher. So she imagined herself with a stone face, conveying to the elect what everyone was not supposed to know. And then higher powers prompted my half-brother to advise me the Moscow Art Theater School. I did not go there – I flew out of the third round. I went to VGIK, and to GITIS, and to Pike, and in the end I was accepted to Sliver, and then for paid education. Only by the second year they were transferred to the budget.
“We are trying to react to each other, to touch, to exchange, to receive something”
Did you perceive rejection as unfair?
EL: No, I thought: “I’m not as capable as others, I don’t understand anything in art, I don’t know literature, I don’t know so many poems. I don’t know anything at all and I will never get into this world. Because they are getting smarter and everyone knows some secret. But not me”.
But then those thoughts disappeared?
EL: Yes, somewhere in the fourth year, when they began to praise me and according to my grades, I became the first student. Before, I was just afraid that I would be scolded, like at school, where I had a constant feeling of inadequacy. I thought: I will never understand either chemistry, or physics, or algebra, or geometry, but the whole class understands. Barely made it to graduation.
After Sliver, you went to the Moscow Youth Theater. Where else have you been invited?
EL: I just had a fantastic offer in St. Petersburg, in the BDT itself – with the provision of an apartment (imagine!), food stamps, an increased acting category and other benefits. I just felt like a little Alice Freindlich. But I chose the Youth Theater: because my mother lived in Moscow, I did not want to leave her. Yes, and Moscow is closer to me than Peter. Then, this is the Youth Theater – with Henrietta Yanovskaya and Kama Ginkas.
Read more:
- “Planetarium instead of space”
Do you believe in predestination?
EL: Of course, but I would call it the word “fate”. Yes, I believe that it is destined, but it can be changed depending on how the person behaves.
Changed by whom?
EL: Space entities.
So you believe that extraterrestrial forces are watching what we are doing here?
EL: Yes, I’m sure that each of us has a personal secret officer who reports to the “superior authorities”. Once I thought that I myself was the mistress and builder of my life. But no, both people and situations are thrown by fate. And there is only one right way through all the forks – the one that shows us the signs of our destiny. We can simply ignore or ignore them.
“I really liked the weather forecasters. I also wanted to drive clouds, rule cyclones, send rains and thunderstorms.
But do we then have the freedom to choose actions? Or are we just reacting to circumstances?
EL: We were taught at the institute to start from a partner, from what he is now, how he looks, and to react in a lively way. If you mumble a role with a memorized intonation, then there will be no live theater, no live cinema, nothing will happen. I cannot play any performance the same way, because my partner is always different. Within the framework of a given program, we are trying to respond to each other, somehow come into contact, exchange, receive something. Here is a world model for you.
But there are different partners. How, for example, did you react to the wonderful Alexei Serebryakov in Leviathan? His character is difficult.
EL: Maybe, but he’s a great partner. Only here is his mobile … In my opinion, he is the only actor in the world who does not turn off the phone on the set. Because: suddenly Masha’s wife from Canada will call! According to the script, we should kiss, when suddenly the motive from “At home among strangers, a stranger among our own” is heard, he takes out his phone and starts talking. At first it bothered me. But then I thought: how good it is that there is nothing more important for him than his wife!
For your roles in Elena and Leviathan, you received a full set of awards – winged goddesses, gilded eagles, white elephants, and now also a silver George for Orleans. How do you feel about your popularity? Do you feel that you have become more appreciated?
EL: I can’t say that I’m that popular. Not like TV weather forecasters. In any case, few people recognize me on the street and few people say: “Oh, I saw you somewhere!” And they don’t rush to take pictures with me. Fees, yes, have grown, but oh, how far to overseas sizes. So far (smiles).
New Orleans
It was in another Orleans that the girl saved France. And our Orleans is a provincial city where the hairdresser Lida lives, who killed a dozen unborn children. In this role, Lyadova is so unlike her usual on-screen self that she seems almost like an animated character. Although in the film both the name of the city and the tests ahead are conditional. But some things are realistic. For example, the phrase of a policeman who decided to resist higher forces: “Tactics! Strategically, we’re in the ass!”
“Orleans” by Andrey Proshkin at the box office from 17 September. Cast: Elena Lyadova, Viktor Sukhorukov, Oleg Yagodin, Vitaly Khaev, Timofey Tribuntsev, Evgeny Syty.
Is the trade appropriate?
EL: Within certain limits. Each actor has his own base cost, and you can’t surpass it at times. But I always say that I’m worth more than I was offered.
How is the trade going?
EL: Like in the market. I praise my goods, brag that during the shooting day I will play so many of them that it won’t seem enough, and buyers are trying to bring down the price. But if they offer an interesting job, I can afford to do it for a small amount. But still not for a bowl of soup. Is that a student in a short film. Or in “Yeralash” – it’s nice to plunge into what you loved in childhood.
Read more:
- Talents and Politics
Do you dare to argue with the directors?
EL: It happens, yes. When I read the script for Orleans, I immediately called Proshkin back, saying: “I agree! Do you want me to even cut off my front teeth for this role? And he: no, you don’t. But I want to cut your hair so that the tomboy comes out. But this is not, I say, taboo, I do not cut my hair. Come on, since the heroine is a hairdresser, in each scene she will have a new wig and a new image – with clothes, with makeup, and we will glue different eyelashes. And the gait – on high heels, but stupidly uncertain, jerkily, I showed him this gait in Chita at the festival, a year before filming, but he remembered. Like this (gets up and shows). He really wanted me to be different, not like myself in other pictures. And I am grateful to him for this. In general, I am grateful to all the directors. Even if I didn’t like something, everything is good.
Images can change, but people? Do you think they can?
EL: Sometimes. But, unfortunately, not only for the better. This is determined by the task that a person sets for himself.
What is the task before you?
EL: I want to become more. In a spiritual sense.
How many times more?
EL: How predetermined by nature.
Triple hat-trick
Elena Lyadova was born on December 25, 1980 in Morshansk, Tambov region, she graduated from school in Odintsovo near Moscow. In 1998 she entered the Higher Theater School named after M.S. Shchepkin; since 2002 he has been working at MTYUZ. The first roles are Stella in the play “A Streetcar Named Desire” by Henrietta Yanovskaya and Rimma in the film “Space as a Premonition” by Alexei Uchitel. In 2006 she received her first award: for the best female role in the film by Ekaterina Shagalova “Pavlov’s Dog”. And five years later there was a hat-trick: “White Elephant”, “Golden Eagle”, “Nika” for the role of Katerina in “Elena” by Andrei Zvyagintsev. The same three awards – for the role of Nadia in Alexander Veledinsky’s film The Geographer Drank His Globe Away (2013) and the role of Lily in Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Leviathan (2014). In 2015, she married actor Vladimir Vdovichenkov and received the Silver George MIFF prize for her role as Lidka in Andrey Proshkin’s film Orleans. On September 21, the TNT channel will begin showing the film series “Treason” (directed by Vadim Perelman), where the heroine of Elena Lyadova will have to sort things out with her husband and three lovers.