In 1987, Anna played a role in the three-part Soviet-French film “The Prisoner of the Château d’If.”
The glory of the sex symbol of the 80s came to Anna Samokhina after the release of the Franco-Soviet film “The Prisoner of If Castle”, where she is the fatal beauty Mercedes. And especially after “Thieves in Law”, where she is the seductive “Chegem Carmen” – Rita. Although, as they say, nothing foreshadowed …
“Tilt Like a Hare”
As a child, Anya Samokhina was not known as a beauty, she did not enjoy overwhelming success with children. Her mother lowered her daughter’s self-esteem below the pedestal: “You are oblique as a hare.” Years later, everyone suddenly decides that she is a scripted beauty.
Remembering his childhood, the future movie star spoke mainly about impenetrable poverty. She lived with her parents and her older sister in a hostel or communal apartment in a remote province.
Anna Samokhina (nee Podgornaya) was born on January 14, 1963 in the city of Guryevsk, Kemerovo region, in a working-class family. Her father is a foreman in the open-hearth workshop, her mother worked at the same metallurgical plant in the design bureau. Then her parents, together with her daughters Rita and Anya, moved to another metallurgical center – to Cherepovets.
At first they lived in a work hostel, where the future movie star slept on a mattress in the common kitchen. Then a communal apartment with the same miserable life: drunken fights, female squeals and obscenities. One of the neighbors hanged himself, someone drank himself, like Anya’s father. He died of alcoholism at the age of 34, when her youngest daughter was only seven years old.
All difficulties and worries fell on the shoulders of the mother. “Mom was constantly nervous because of the lack of money, she broke down with us, she cried,” the actress recalled.
It was a hard school of life, but it raised character and the desire to escape desperate poverty at all costs. When she was a teenager, she promised herself to become a famous actress, get rich and get her family out of the “swamp”. First, there was a year-long practice at the Cherepovets People’s Theater. Well, for 15 years she Anna became a student of the acting department of the Yaroslavl Theater School. At 16, she married her classmate Alexander Samokhin and took her surname, which she glorified. The marriage was, although student, but happy. After 4 years, Alexander’s daughter was born. Together with her husband, Anna went to distribute to sunny Rostov-on-Don, to the Theater of the Young Spectator.
Shot from the movie “Thieves in Law”
GLORY OF ALL THE UNION
There was a fateful meeting with the cinema, when assistant director Georgy Yungvald-Khilkevich came to the acting hostel (oh, this everyday mess) to look for an actress in a new film. In 1987, he began shooting the three-part Soviet-French film Prisoner of If Castle based on the novel The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. Actors were found for all the main roles, only Mercedes was missing. In search of an actress of the “Spanish type”, the director’s assistants went around all the theaters of the Soviet Union and even got to the Rostov Youth Theater. And there they found the future Mercedes in a theater hostel with a small child in her arms. Yungvald-Khilkevich approved Anna Samokhina for the lead female role without a photo audition.
At the same time, director Yuri Kara invited the aspiring actress to play the role of Rita in the romantic action movie Thieves in Law. When the film was released in December 1988, it was enthusiastically received by audiences and scolded by critics: “What a cheap thing! Vulgarity! Kitsch!”. Anna Samokhina also understood this, who had to excuse herself: “I have nothing in common with my heroine.” Morally flawed heroines Rita and Mercedes paved their way to a big movie and brought all-Union fame.
She was bombarded with offers from filmmakers. Basically, she was offered the same type of rokovuh roles, and she very much refused. However, in three years, from 1990 to 1993, she starred in two dozen films.
At home, life got better. In the early 1990s, Anna Samokhina moved to St. Petersburg with her husband and her daughter. She got a job in the theater. Finally, I got my own independent apartment, and even in the center of the city. Real success, including material success, undermined the foundation of the marriage. She broke up with her husband Alexander, with whom she lived for 15 years. She met a successful young businessman Dmitry Konorov and married him. I was not afraid to radically change my life. And I thought: as soon as the situation, in life, at work, becomes uncomfortable, it is necessary to change it. Together with her second husband, she organized her own restaurant business: she started from scratch, she got into debt and spun, like many in the 90s. Together they opened the Graf Suvorov and Lieutenant Rzhevsky restaurants. So Anna Samokhina became a businesswoman. She starred in films a little, Russian cinema at that time was in a serious crisis. In the midst of the “well-fed zero” she returned to the stage, played a lot in private performances and again gained a decent amount of acting.
And suddenly there were problems.
January 14 – 60 years since the birth of one of the most beautiful Russian actresses
Photo: TASS Newsreel.
BURNED IN TWO MONTHS
At the end of 2009, the tragic news spread throughout the Russian media: Anna Samokhina was diagnosed with inoperable stomach cancer. She complaining of pain in her stomach, she ended up in the hospital and there she was given a terrible diagnosis. It was impossible to save her, chemotherapy did not help. She burned out in two months.
She passed away at 47. As her relatives later said, she understood everything and endured suffering and pain very firmly.
Until the end, I waited for a miracle.
The media discussed in detail both the disease and its causes. What could cause: the diets that the actress liked, stress or smoking? There were rumors about stem cell injections. It was… it wasn’t, God knows. Anna Samokhina’s daughter says that the version about stem cells was born from scratch, they say, her mother never made secrets of experiments on her appearance. Yes, she was afraid of old age, like many beautiful women. But what about stem cells?
Anna Samokhina spent her last days in a hospice, the employees of which said: every day her makeup was impeccable. The actress, until her last breath, tried to be a beautiful woman who had success, love, popularity … And, alas, a very short life.
