Michail Michailowitsch Naswanow

Mikhail Mikhailovich Nazvanov (Russian: Михаил Михайлович Названов ; 12 April 1918 – 13 July 1964) was a Soviet and Russian stage and film actor. Honored Artist of the RSFSR (1949)

Mikhail Nazvanov was born in Moscow in the wealthy family of a large technologist-technologist Mikhail K. Nazhanov; his mother, Olga Nikolayevna Butomo-Nazhanova, was a famous chamber singer. In 1931 he graduated from Academic Music College.

Between 1931 and 1935 Nazvanov studied acting at the Drama Studio of the Moscow Art Theatre. April 1935 he was arrested and until 1940 imprisoned in Gulag (article 58-10, Ukhtpechlag).

In 1942 Nazvanov was invited to join the Mossovet Theatre; between 1950 and 1957 he was member of the troupe at the Moscow Pushkin Drama Theatre. In 1957 he was again invited to join the Art Theater, which, however, left in 1960 and became actor in the Mosfilm-studio. As a stage actor he played Trigorin in The Seagull, Krechinsky in Krechinsky's Wedding, Ripafratta in The Mistress of the Inn, Robert Chiltern in An Ideal Husband, and Stiva Oblonsky in Anna Karenina.

Mikhail Nazvanov made his film debut in 1943 in the popular film Wait for Me and immediately gained fame. Sergei Eisenstein invited him to the role of Andrey Kurbsky in Ivan the Terrible. He collaborated also with such famous directors as Grigori Aleksandrov (Encounter at the Elbe, The Composer Glinka), Vsevolod Pudovkin (Zhukovsky), Mikhail Romm (The Russian Question, Attack from the Sea), Grigori Kozintsev (Belinsky, Hamlet). Nazvanov has also directed film The Mistress of the Inn.