Natalya Georgyevna Gundareva (Наталья Георгиевна Гундарева, August 28, 1948, Moscow, USSR, - May 15, 2005, Moscow, Russian Federation) was a Soviet Russian film and theatre actress, one of the stars of Mayakovsky Theatre where she worked since 1971. People's Artist of Russia (1986) and the USSR State Prize laureate (1984), Gundareva four times won the Soviet Actress of the Year title (1977, 1981, 1985, 1990), according to Soviet Screen magazine. She is best remembered for her roles in films like The Autumn (Osen, 1975), Sladkaya zhenshchina (Sweet Woman, 1977), Autumn Marathon (1979), Odnazhdy dvadtsat let spustya (Once, 20 Years On, 1981).

Biographie

Natalya Gundareva was born in Taganka, Moscow. He father Georgy Matveyevich was an engineer at a car factory, mother Yelena Mikhaylovna a senior engineer at the construction engineering research institute. Both parents were fond of theatre and Natalya often attended shows and practice sessions of the amateur stage her mother was performing at. At 15 the girl herself joined the Young Muscovites' Theatre, and yet it was a total surprise for the family when a couple of years later she decided to make acting her profession. Gundareva enrolled into the Boris Shchukin Theatre Institute and joined the Katin-Yartsev's group, with classmates like Konstantin Raikin, Yuri Bogatyryov and Natalya Varley.


Career
In 1971, having graduated the Institute, Natalya Gundareva joined the Moscow Mayakovsky Theatre troupe where for the next three years she stayed in shadows, having to be content with occasional minor roles. Her breakthrough here came in 1974 when, substituting for Tatyana Doronina, she played Lipochka in The Bankrupt after Alexander Ostrovsky's play, both critics and Moscow theatre community recognizing a newly born star.

Natalya Gundareva debuted in film in 1972, playing the leading role in Vitaly Melnikov's 'rural comedy' Hello and Good-Bye. Her first major success came with Vladimir Fetin's melodrama Sweet Woman (1977) where she played Anya Dobrokhotova, although in retrospect highly praised were her earlier parts in Andrey Smirnov's Autumn (1975) and Nikolai Gubenko's Wounded Game (1976). In 1977 Gundareva was pronounced the Soviet Actress of the Year by Sovetsky Ekran magazine, a feat she later repeated thrice, in 1981, 1985 and 1990.

1979-1984 are considered the peak of Natalya Gundareva's career. In 1979 she excelled on theatre stage as Katerina Izmaylova in the Andrey Goncharov's production of Nikolai Leskov's Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. On the big screen, having left behind the early credo of a 'simple peasant girl', the one she fit in organically, Gundareva created a number of multi-dimensional characters, notably Nina Buzykina in Georgiy Daneliya's Autumn Marathon (1979), the film that brought her the Vasiliev Brothers Prize. Later critics were marveling at her performance in Vitaly Melnikov's September Vacation (after Alexander Vampilov's play Duck Hunt, 1981; at the time the film was tagged 'decadent' and was premiered only in 1987) and Samson Samsonov's For Lonely People There is a Hostel (1984) where she played Vera Golubeva, a character scriptwriter Arkady Inin created with her in mind. In 1986 Gundareva received the prestigious People's Artist of Russia title. That year also saw her getting seriously injured in a car crash.

In 1990s Natalya Gundareva's appearances in films became few and far between. Her health started to deteriorate. The facial plastic surgery might have given glitzy sheen to her looks and taken her to posh magazines’ covers but damaged to some extent her stage performance, causing difficulties with mimics. In the summer of 2001 Gundareva suffered her first stroke. In 2002, while walking in the garden she slipped, fell and injured her neck.

Natalya Georgyevna Gundareva died on May 15, 2005 in the Saint Alexiy hospital in Moscow, as the second stroke she suffered proved fatal. On May 18 she was buried at the Moscow Troyekurovskoye Cemetery cemetery.


Selected filmography