Alexander Abdulov and Yulia Meshina got married in 2006. Photo: Liza LARINA/PhotoXPress
This year in January it was 15 years since Alexander Abdulov’s heart stopped. According to tradition, on January 3, family and friends went to the artist’s grave. The daughter of the “Ordinary Miracle” star Zhenya Abdulova grew up as a copy of her father. And, as her friends say, her character is also that of dad. Komsomolskaya Pravda found out how the actor’s widow Julia and her 15-year-old daughter live today.
“The same girl?”
Abdulov and his first wife, Irina Alferova, were considered the most beautiful acting couple in the USSR. Alexander raised his daughter Alferova from his first marriage, Xenia, as his own. The heiress by blood Zhenya appeared when the artist was already 53 years old. A year before her tragic death, the artist gave birth to a daughter from his second wife, Yulia Meshina.
This was Abdulov’s daughter in 2021. Every year Zhenya looks more and more like his father.
Photo: SOCIAL NETWORKS
Today, Abdulov’s widow and daughter lead a private life. Julia has a page on social media, where she sometimes reminds her star husband of hers. As a child, my daughter posted personal photos and posts on the Internet, but then she abandoned it and closed herself off from prying eyes. So the actor’s fans in recent years have not heard anything about the idol’s successor.
Evgenia and Yulia Abdulov arrived at the Vagankovskoye cemetery after the mass. A couple of hours before his arrival, the widow’s assistant Tatyana cleaned the snow-covered grave of Alexander Gavriilovich.
– The widow Julia comes every year to the grave without fail, she never did, – the attendant told us.
While relatives were in the temple, friends came: actor, president of the Guild of Actors of the Russian Federation Sergey Nikonenko, TV presenter and director Alexander Oleinikov, actress Daria Drozdovskaya, Lenkom artists. There was also a faithful friend of Abdulov, producer Arsen Adamyan. “Yarmolnik couldn’t do it today,” said one of his friends. “The valley is also far away, resting in hot countries.”
Before our eyes, the tomb was transformed. The men brought lavish bouquets of fresh flowers. The widow Julia, a gorgeous lady lavishly dressed in a black skirt and leopard-print jacket, also laid flowers. And she then she stood for a long time, stroking the cold stone of the monument, and she said something quietly to her late husband. Daughter Zhenya lit candles at the grave.
So this is the same girl? Sergei Nikonenko exclaimed theatrically and hugged the girl. – I remember you when you were little! And now you have grown. Linda, she looks like her dad…
Zhenya lit a lamp at his father’s grave. When the artist died, the girl was only 9 months old.
Photo: Anna VELIGZHANINA
Zhenya is confident in public. Lively, even a little cocky. Noticing the interested looks from the onlookers, the girl put a black mask over her face and playfully showed the fig.
– You, they say, want to become a director? someone asked. But the girl dodged the answer.
Once upon a time, Mark Zakharov invited the still rather small Zhenya to play in Lenkom. She tried, but then changed her mind. No persuasion helped: she said “no” – period. A few years ago, Zhenya was engaged in a film studio. In 2017, she played the daughter of the main characters in the film “Love and Saks” directed by Alla Surikova, then she starred in a music video with her friend Yulia. At this, her interest in acting disappeared. Now Zhenya is a high school student studying at a regular Moscow school. As friends say, I have not yet decided on a profession. “My favorite hobbies are drawing and soccer,” she said a few years ago.
The girl does not remember her star father: when he died, she was only nine months old. But proud of her parents. In her apartment on Gilyarovsky street and at the dacha, there are many of her portraits on the walls. And on holidays, Evgenia likes to watch films with her participation, and she knows the songs from these films by heart.
mystery friend
At the memorial meeting, we also notice Alexei Orlov, a businessman from Baku and a close friend of Abdulov. The artist from him asked to be the godfather of Zhenechka’s daughter. It was Orlov who organized the actor’s trip to Israel for treatment when he was diagnosed with cancer. He later took over a friend’s family. The press wrote that he could not resist Yulia’s charms and wooed her, although Yulia herself did not confirm this. This time, she and Orlov spoke like old friends. But Abdulov’s widow was accompanied by a completely different man. Someone said that his name is Yuri. He held the woman, helped her onto the ice rink. Yuri got into the driver’s seat in a black Mercedes, Yulia sat next to him. My daughter and her friend got into a Range Rover parked nearby.
At the cemetery, 47-year-old Yulia was accompanied by a personal driver. It is he who is called the new chosen one of the actor’s widow.
Photo: Anna VELIGZHANINA
It turned out that the car with elite numbers, which is driven by Abdulov’s widow, is listed on the balance sheet of the Russian Orthodox Church according to the traffic police databases.
“Sometimes the rich do this: they sign up with status organizations so no one can follow them,” insiders explained to me. – Probably, the widow and daughter are encrypted, they do not want journalists to find out about their personal life.
Abdulov’s widow’s personal driver is rumored to be her secret heart friend. The neighbors see him often. He brings the woman and then stays with her at the dacha in Vnukovo. Julia does not announce it. They say she believes none of her boyfriends can replace her star husband, the bar is too high. However, according to her friends, she has a personal life, only a woman does not flaunt her. She does not shine in public and does not participate in talk shows. Julia works as a lawyer in a medical company, she is well off and does not need anything.
Death of husband at 32
Before Abdulov, Yulia Meshina had a rather stormy personal life. Yes, and the sex symbol of Russian cinema had many lovers for her, but for many years he did not divorce Alferova, although he did not live with her. The artist filed for divorce shortly after her death to legitimize relations with Julia, who was then carrying her daughter under her heart.
Meshina was often called the femme fatale. She was born on July 30, 1975 in Neftegorsk, Sakhalin region, but she spent her childhood in Ukraine, in Nikolaev. After her parents divorced her, she moved to Ukhta, where she trained as a lawyer. At the age of 18, she was married for the first time, but soon divorced. In 1998, she moved to Moscow and got a job in the office of businessman Shabtai Kalmanovich. A businessman associated with shadow structures was shot dead in 2009.
Friends say: Julia has a personal life, she just doesn’t flaunt it.
Photo: Anna VELIGZHANINA
Julia lived in a civil marriage with producer Igor Markov. She had an affair with singer Sergei Trofimov, who left her wife for her. And then she Julia left him, and he suffered from her and dedicated the song “Bullfinches” to her with touching words: “Today I spent the night with my beloved woman, without whom I simply cannot live.”
In 2002, Meshina married Alexei Ignatenko, the son of the then head of the ITAR-TASS agency, Vitaly Ignatenko. Married Julia met Abdulov in 2005 in Kamchatka. Her husband arranged the star’s free time on vacation. We met at a picnic: he came with a fan, she and her husband. Abdulov recalled that he fell in love with the brunette at first sight. I found her phone, bombarded with calls. He invited me to St. Petersburg, where she was filming then. But Julia went to Odessa with her parents. Abdulov went to her…
Returning to Moscow, Meshina packed up her things and left her husband, saying that she was getting a divorce. She had an even relationship with her husband, without flinching. Abdulov tried to turn a woman’s life into a fairy tale: he drove to the resorts, introduced her to the actors, gave her flowers and jewelry. Her daughter Zhenya was born on March 21, 2007. The girl was baptized in the Church of the Nativity of the Virgin in Putinki. This 17th-century temple, which is next to his native Lenkom theater, the actor helped to restore in the late 1980s. Abdulov was buried in it a few months later.
She learned of her fatal diagnosis, lung cancer, six months after her daughter was born. Her friends collected money for expensive medicines. She went to Israel for treatment, but the tumor was inoperable. On his last New Year’s Eve, the actor persuaded the doctors to let him go from the clinic to the dacha to celebrate the family holiday. But immediately after the chimes of the clock, he fell ill, painkillers did not help. Abdulov said goodbye to his mother, went up to the nursery, took a photo with his little daughter and asked his wife to call an ambulance. Julia was by his side in the living room until the last moment. At 8 o’clock in the morning on January 3, the actor’s heart stopped.
About his fatal diagnosis, lung cancer, Abdulov found out six months after the birth of his daughter. D.
Photo: Anna VELIGZHANINA
Left a widow at 32, Julia said she continued to live only for the sake of her daughter. For her, she kept Abdulov’s apartment and cottage in the form in which they were with her husband. The widow sold all the jewelry donated by the artist so that she and Zhenya had the same standard of living. The actor’s friends helped the woman raise more than $800,000 to pay Abdulov’s family for her share of her inheritance in a country house. Julia didn’t do it right away, but she was able to establish good relations with her husband’s relatives. And she until the last days she talked with her mother, Lyudmila Alexandrovna, who lived to be 96 years old. The artist’s mother passed away in 2017.
AND THERE WAS ANOTHER CASE
His veins were opened because of a woman and he almost crashed on a plane
Abdulov from his youth adored women. At the institute, I fell in love with a nurse from the maternity hospital. And, in order to skip conferences with her, he used her sick leave until he was exposed. When the girl left him, he ripped open his veins in the hostel. Saved by a friend who called an ambulance on time. Then Alexander managed to fall in love with an American suspected of espionage, after which the young actor was not allowed to travel abroad for many years. Having fallen in love with Irina Alferova, he carried her in her arms throughout the park. Abdulov had affairs with actresses, dancers, and journalists. And I found a brief happiness with Yulia Meshina.
The actor often went into the story. A crazy fan threw acid in his face out of jealousy; he managed to dodge it. Once he was supposed to fly in an airplane, but he fell asleep: that liner crashed. Once a robber climbed into him at night with an ax, Alexander miraculously survived. He was a player. I spent a lot of money in the casino and once lost one of the apartments. And yet, his main passions were the theater and his favorite profession.
