Mikhail Pugovkin

Soviet and Russian film and theater actor. People's Artist of the USSR (1988). The real surname is Pugonkin. He was born in a poor family, because of which he had the opportunity to complete only three classes of rural school. After the Pugovkin family moved to Moscow in 1936, Mikhail got a job at the Moscow Kaganovich Brake Plant as an apprentice electrician. After work, he attended a drama club at the club. Kalyaeva. After one of the performances, the drama club Pugovkin was noticed by the director Fyodor Kaverin, who then headed the Moscow Drama Theater, and invited him to the professional theater. So from the age of 16, Mikhail Pugovkin came to the Moscow Drama Theater on Sretenka, where he worked from 1939 to 1941 as an actor. In 1940, the famous film director Grigori Lvovich Roshal noticed a 17-year-old Pugovkin and invited him to play in the film Artamonovs Affair. It was Pugovkin's debut in the movie: he inherited the tiny role of the merchant Stepashi Barsky, who is trying to transform the main character at the wedding. During World War II volunteered for the front. He served in the 1147th rifle regiment scout. In October 1942, he was seriously wounded in the leg near Voroshilovgrad (now Lugansk). The injury turned out to be serious, gangrene began, but the leg was saved. After the hospital, Pugovkin was commissioned from military service. Awarded the Order of the Patriotic War II degree. In 1943, he worked at the Moscow Drama Theater (in 1943 merged with the Theater of the Revolution), where he played the first major role in his life - Pyotr Ogonyov in the play “Muscovite”. In 1943 he was accepted into the Studio School at the Moscow Art Theater in the course of Ivan Mikhailovich Moskvin, becoming his favorite student. Popularity came to the cinema after the movies “Soldier Ivan Brovkin”, “The Motley Case”, “Earth and People”, “Girl with a Guitar”. The actor considered work as the best time of his work for Leonid Gaidai (six films in a row), Andrey Tutyshkin (“The Wedding in Malinovka” and “Shelmenko-Batman”), as well as for the great storyteller Alexander Row (four roles of kings and kings). He also starred in more than ten film magazines "Wick" and in several children's magazines "Yeralash."