Actor Kirill Lavrov has died in St. Petersburg at the age of 82. His artistic heritage includes dozens of cinema and theatre roles. He created most of his theatre work, at the Tovstonogov Drama Theatre in St Petersburg.

Some of the best-known films with Kirill Lavrov are “Virgin Soil Upturned,” “Alive and dead,” “The Brothers Karamazov”. As for theatre work, the legendary productions of “Five Evenings” and “Three sisters” are among his best and most famous roles. For over 50 years the Tovstonogov Drama Theatre was a home to him, and since 1989 he was its artistic director.

“He carried this burden with dignity and courage,” Mikhail Shvydkoy from the Federal Agency for Culture and Cinematography stressed. “The theatre survived difficult times, and what he did to keep the spirit and the traditions of the theatre was a really a feat”.

Kirill Lavrov had no professional education or training in acting or drama. He studied at an aviation school and entered the profession after an amateur theatre studio. He used to joke that he could have ended up a skipper of a boat or even a great football player. Destiny and fate decided otherwise.

“He was a true Russian actor,” actor Vasily Livanov said. “Strong, intelligent, kind-hearted. It is a great loss for all of us”.

Winner of numerous cinema and theatre awards, he never looked down upon contemporary television acting, including the roles he played in a criminal detective series. His last work on the screen was the role of Pontius Pilate in the screen version of the novel “Master and Margarita” by Mikhail  Bulgakov.

“He touched the hearts of so many people, no mater if they knew him in person or not,” actor and director Yury Solomin pointed out. “Viewers loved him in all his roles, even when he played bad or controversial characters”.

Despite serious heart disease, he never stopped acting on stage up to his very last days.

He was supposed to appear in the production of “the Quartet” on April 29. Now that will be the day of his funeral. He will be buried at the Bogoslovskoe cemetery in St Petersburg. The requiem will be held at the same church where he was baptised.