“RG” recalled six confessions from the interview artist over the years; suddenly, a real portrait will appear on this tile.
About flares and childhood dreams.
As a child, he used to have long hair and bell-bottoms. I started smoking in eighth grade. He had a knitting needle in his pants to defend himself. And on the other hand, he loved to play the piano, read adventure literature, he liked motorcycles. In tenth grade he had a Java motorcycle. Mom was very nervous, she even hid the keys. She didn’t know that she could start a motorcycle without them.
My grandmother raised me. Dad worked as the director of the Rosconcert, mom worked in a department store.
Did you dream of being an actor as a child? He had no specific goals. My father offered to try his hand at the theater, he himself graduated from VGIK before the war. To my surprise, the first time I entered the Shchepkinskoye school, after which I ended up in the Maly Theater.
Especially except the nose, ears, lips and eyes.
You know, appearances are temporary. Yes, I really owe a lot of papers to her, at first I didn’t even think about this topic, because there is this face of hers and there it is. But when you become a hostage to a situation where both cinema and theater try to blow up only your face, thank you mom and dad! – I always want to say that besides my nose, ears, lips and eyes, there is something else inside. This is where the papers of Nijinsky, Cyrano, Dr. Jekyll came from…
And if we talk about fans, it’s good that I didn’t become popular in my youth. would not have survived. And so I’m only happy with the girls who are waiting near the theater entrance, giving flowers… Our profession is public, I didn’t think before that rumors and gossip come with fame. Sometimes they are so offensive that you want to give it all away so that you will never be heard from again.
No matter how hard I try, I have to admit that a lot of posts still hold on to me. I am not iron. But I do not worry about myself, but about my relatives and I begin to take various heavy objects. My friends know about it, and when another article about me appears in the tabloids, they call: “Sasha, calm down… We’re already on our way…”
Alexander Domogarov in the scene from the play “Richard III” directed by Nina Chusova. Photo: Vyacheslav Prokofiev/TASS
About cool girls and high fences
I am a man of extremes. Sometimes I want to dissolve and just disappear from the surface of the earth. And sometimes you want to shout: “Yes, I’m still alive, guys!” And for everyone to notice and appreciate. There are many things that keep me on the ground. I love life. I love motorcycles, coffee, pretty girls. I drive around the city by car and think: “What cool girls they are after all! Awesome open faces!”
There are many things that make me happy in life. For example, my house is in the suburbs. After the performance I get here in 50 minutes. When the doors close behind me, there is an incredible feeling: this is my territory of peace. The air is amazing, pines, birches, silence. Not a single person can enter here. True, an incident once happened: journalists, not being able to see how I live, rented a helicopter and filmed my house from a bird’s eye view. They published it in a newspaper with arrows: they say, admire how the monster lives. Here is a house for his cars, here for dogs, because only with them does he find a common language. I really love dogs. They are nobler than many people.
For the most part, I only support the myths created by journalists about my closeness, arrogance. I’m tired of proving that I’m not a donkey. I left because I can’t breathe the city air anymore and I want to live behind a high fence so that those I don’t want to see don’t come to me. But I am always open to my friends, I have a wonderful company. Together we are cool, fun.
What you don’t wish on your enemy
I am interested in the “chemistry” of a person who suffers. What was happening inside Nijinsky, a dancer who was called god, and how it was necessary to “fall off”, break, so that nothing of the personality remained… There was a real nerve in this performance, people who saw me on stage , then asked with participation – How much time do I need to “return”, recover? Half an hour, by the way, was enough for me, and it was physical fatigue. But I didn’t have, I’m telling you, not a single piece of paper that made it easy, “they say, I’ll stay here for three hours, and that’s it”, not a single one! Everything is emotionally and energetically costly to the limit.
There were two jobs where I just made the wrong choice of material. Just two. You wouldn’t wish this on your enemy: going to work feeling “ok kill me already”! I don’t want this anymore. And you don’t need money when you realize you’re a motherfucker, you play the episode normally and you know it’s going to be cut and there won’t be any of your work left.
When I was preparing for the role of Nijinsky, I dug up so much literature that I think I can defend my dissertation on the art of ballet. Then we filmed a series called “Heroes”. 1919, war communism, a tsarist detective man is invited to help organize the MUR. And now I know a lot about the crime of that time, and about the “stump gang”, and about Yasha Koshelkov, who caught Lenin, took off his fur coat, took off his coat, took his Browning car and left it. wow, although it could turn the whole story around… You let yourself be carried away by the material, you immerse yourself in it and you already know why and what you are talking about, and not just “stammering” the text. Now that is interesting!
Actor Alexander Domogarov during his concert “My Seasons”, 2019. Photo: Artem Geodakyan / TASS
How to defeat Jekyll and Hyde
I’m often asked how you manage to do a lot of everything in the frame: ride, fence, fight and sing… Riding: it’s like riding a bike, once you learn, you don’t forget what it’s like. made. Another thing is that a horse is a living being, not a machine, and you need to find contact with it, get used to it. True, I have not waved the “Iron” for a long time, but I think I can, although not as beautifully as in “Fire and Sword”. And as for music, I still can’t forgive myself for having studied piano at a music school under pressure! In our theater there is “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” – the most difficult performance, where I have to play two people in one, with different voice and speech characteristics, complex arias, you have to figure out what and how sing for each of them. My heroes hang there, they run and jump, they wander… I often liken a musical performance to unloading a freight car.
About where you are needed
In the theater, of course, the return is much more powerful. In the theater, you spend a minute, okay, for one take, and then you wait a half hour for the lights to relocate. And here at 19.00 he went on stage, and that’s it, there are no minutes, but there are three hours in front of the audience.
Theater is a search for truth. The theater is home. Cinema is a good, extreme and energy-consuming elite recreation. Where you are loved, where you are needed.
Alexander Domogarov as Ivan in the play “Scenes from Married Life” staged by director Andrei Konchalovsky. Photo: Anton Novoderezhkin / TASS
