Natalya Gundareva

Natalya Georgyevna Gundareva (Russian: Наталья Георгиевна Гундарева, August 28, 1948 - May 15, 2005) was a Soviet Russian film and theatre actress, one of the leading figures at the Mayakovsky Theatre where she worked since 1971. People's Artist of Russia (1986) and the USSR State Prize (1984) laureate, as well as a four times winner of the Soviet Screen magazine's Soviet Actress of the Year poll (1977, 1981, 1985, 1990), Gundareva is best remembered for her leading parts in Sweet Woman (1976), Autumn Marathon (1979) and Once Upon a Time Twenty Years Later (1981). Natalya Gundareva was born in Moscow and spent her early years in a communal flat her family shared with several others, at the Taganka region. Her father Georgy Matveyevich was an engineer at a car factory, her mother Yelena Mikhaylovna was a senior engineer at a construction engineering research institute. Both were fond of theatre and Natalya often attended shows and rehearsals of the amateur troupe her mother was performing with. Aged fifteen, Natalya joined the Leninskiye Gory Pioneer Palace's youth theatre, and two years later decided to make acting her profession. She enrolled into the Boris Shchukin Theatre Institute and joined the Katin-Yartsev's group, where her classmates were Konstantin Raikin, Yuri Bogatyryov and Natalya Varley, among others.