This is her time. She is everywhere: she triumphantly walked the red carpet in Cannes with Kirill Serebrennikov’s film «Petrovs in the flu», and on October 5 went into space to shoot the film. Julia loves risk and fun. But he says to himself: “I lack lightness, I am a troublesome person, a panic person.”
The actress opens the door to her apartment. Bright interior with rare details of luxurious aged wood. The snow-white retriever Cathy does not leave us for a minute during the conversation. Blonde Julia talks about her daughters, one of whom is naturally fair, and the other is acting as an albino girl in a movie …
A white-white day in a white-white room with white-white people who have a white-white dog. The beginning is like from the Soviet folklore-shifter.
Psychologies: As a child, you sang for many hours a day and dreamed. And you know, my childhood was the same. I sang from loneliness, and why are you?
Julia Peresild: For the same reason. Loneliness is my resource time, for example, I sculpted from plasticine under a blanket for 3-4 hours. I needed a closed space, the most important processes took place alone with me. I also sang when something bad happened and I was very worried. It was anti-stress therapy. But sometimes I just sang songs in front of the bathroom mirror and dreamed. And then she lay down on the bed and dreamed even more actively.
In the end, I planned my life. Reality even exceeded expectations
Well, how could I, a girl from Pskov, get into this wonderful world? After all, I even first appeared in the theater at the age of 18, when I already became a student of GITIS. Theater at that time was not my dream. But Moscow — yes. The first time I came here was at the age of 12, after my father died. The music teacher wanted to get me out of all this and tried to send me to the Morning Star competition.
For this trip, you had to ask the oligarch for money. Not too brave for a kid?
This is my first attempt at charity, only from the other side. I needed one million seven hundred thousand rubles — that’s how much tickets cost in a reserved seat and accommodation in a cheap hotel. Neither our family nor our friends had that kind of money. And the teacher and I had to go after rich people. To each I sang a song that I was going to perform at the Morning Star. Everyone said: «Thank you, goodbye!» And one gave me money… Moscow stunned me! The contact was lightning fast.
Do you trust intuition? Is it important for you to immediately get along with the city, with the director, with the project, with the man?
It’s the most important. I am an absolute intuitive. It is enough for me to meet a person in order to understand whether he is mine or not.
When I do not listen to my inner voice, I am betrayed. Betrayal has no gender
It doesn’t matter if it’s a partner on the court or my man. It also hurts because I can’t half be with a person. I give myself completely.
You have said more than once that you need male energy and make friends only with men. What’s wrong with women?
I may have been unlucky, but I have met a lot of stupid, talkative and shallow women along the way. With men, you immediately talk about some kind of essence, you laugh more and act like hooligans. If you build relationships correctly, you can create projects with them, make performances, shoot movies … But now I notice that many women have good male energy. This is especially noticeable in big cities. In the provinces, it is still difficult for a woman to prove that she is able to think over the strategy of any business.
Are you a strategist?
Yes, I am partly involved in the strategy of the GALCHONOK charitable foundation. And by the way, no one thought out a career for me. I’m not a strategy genius, I’m sure I make a million mistakes, both small and large. For example, I choose the wrong projects, and each of them is a blow to the name. And in my profession, by and large, there is nothing but a name.
But also in personal life. Wasn’t your romance with Alexei Uchitel a blow to your reputation? Are you worried about him being married? How did you agree with yourself?
I have many complexes about this. But this is the story of my life, which was spent in love. Relationships were our common choice. And no matter how much remorse I may have — and there were a lot of them — all this is nonsense compared to love and children … It’s always unpleasant if my successes are attributed to someone. For example, at that time I was filming, playing in the Theater of Nations …
Once upon a time, teachers at GITIS said: «You are not a gingerbread man to please everyone.» So I’m definitely not a gingerbread man
I hate the modern trend of creating popularity at the expense of personal life. Have you read biographies of the sixties? Open any and wince. We are monks compared to them. In terms of intensity of passions, we are “generation zero”. Only the yellow press is excited.
Do you explain to your daughters, 12-year-old Anya and 8-year-old Masha, how to relate to what they write about you and their father?
No need to explain. They know how we live. And we live well, we help each other as much as we can help our relatives. Parents, Lesha, Lesha’s sons — we are in a great relationship. Either way, it’s a family. The girls communicate with their father, they really need him. Everything else is nonsense.
And, of course, I envy people who can live together for decades … I dream about this. It’s impossible to organize. There is no strategy to build here, it is something divine.
Unfortunately, I have not yet met a person who would say: «Let’s get married!»
Perhaps in the future the institution of marriage will change, because women change. My grandmother could not imagine the word «divorce», it was indecent. In our country, marriage was saved by a woman. She held the man, cooked, washed, cleaned, donated, suffered, was beaten, insulted, humiliated …
Have you ever been humiliated by men?
No. A raised voice is enough for me so that the person is no longer around. I must say, when women humiliate men, it is also disgusting. There is a fine line that cannot be crossed.
Do you have conversations with your daughters about family relationships, or is it enough for them to observe your life?
The conversation is bullshit! Morality is boring. Everything that is boring does not get into the heart, or into the brain, or into the liver. When the girls first came to Alexei on the set, he began to blow someone’s head off their shoulders. Lesha, of course, loves artists, and he is a great director, but a very emotional person. And when something goes wrong — and in the movies everything always goes wrong — he starts to rage.
At home, the girls said: “But dad can scream!” They were shocked
Of course, I myself can shout: “Hey, where did you go ?!” But they know that I am proud of them, that they are incredibly talented, beautiful, smart, and I love them, despite the complex characters. They are not simple girls — oranges will not be born from aspen.
Mothers have a million doubts whether they are raising their children this way. And you are also a busy mom. Does the question torment you, do you pay enough attention to your daughters?
I don’t worry about missing something important in girls’ lives. My kids are number one and they know it. As for the profession, it is important how you allocate time. I became a serious planner. Once a week I paint everything on a huge roll of paper. It’s hard and stressful work to make a plan so that you can snatch it from here, give it there, and so that the girls don’t sit waiting for me on the phones.
And also to see parents and friends. I have a company of classmates, the backbone of the Theater of Nations, all of them have children. Together we go to museums, theaters, children with us, communicate with each other. The most exciting thing is to set up life in such a way that you do not have to remove children from it. I have exactly the opposite. Where my daughters can’t go, I won’t go there either.
The eldest, Anya, starred in the thriller «Tiber» with Victoria Isakova. That is, patronage in the profession still works?
This moment was out of my control. An offer for Anya came to my director. The daughter auditioned for another role, where there were three shooting days. And then I was informed that she was approved for the main one. I re-read the script, and I had a heart collapse: the boy throws her off the boat into the lake, they live in a tent, the children beat her … In addition, the heroine is an albino, Anya needs to bleach her hair, eyelashes and eyebrows. Horror! But neither I nor Lesha could forbid her, because Anya said that she really wanted …
Anya has a bright Instagram (an extremist organization banned in Russia), in some photos she is a kind of Lolita — seductive poses, high heels …
Anya does not go beyond. Modern children see the social networks of adults and take off the tracing paper, but you cannot forbid the child to live on the Internet. At first I also thought Instagram (an extremist organization banned in Russia) was too early. But then I thought, since this cannot be avoided, let it develop immunity. And she’s on TikTok, I don’t understand it at all.
We have something else in our heads, and this «other» becomes obsolete
For example, Anna was sent a script, they said she needed to record and send self-tests. She wrote it down and sent it. I remember myself. How many times have I turned down projects because of self-testing! I’m an old fart! The world has long been arranged differently. We need to take an example from children, learn from them.
There is another opinion — they say that the current structure of the world simplifies children, makes their approach to life rather primitive …
I do not agree. Not all of us at 17 were spiritualized. I listened to «My Baby» and «Vladimir Central». But this did not prevent me from falling in love with classical music at the institute. In general, you need to absorb everything beautiful. See the world with wide open eyes. I have not lost this ability. Here I am walking down the street and just smiling at someone, although it’s a little scary that he won’t smile back.
And it’s also scary that they will be rejected, not loved. Many of us are very afraid of this, about this is the new picture «Milk», in which I starred (at the box office from September 23. — Approx. ed.). My heroine suddenly starts to have milk, although she cannot have children. Milk is magical, it heals. Milk is a metaphor. A film about the lack of love. How we are afraid to take it and give it away. It seems to us that we will lose if we share love.
In fact, exactly the opposite. The more love you give, the more it appears. Helping another, you warm yourself with it. I felt it while working with the GALCHONOK Foundation. Charity for me is a cycle of love, salvation, therapy that saves me from a bad mood, depression and a sense of my own insignificance.