Vadim Spiridonov in the film “The Eternal Call”
Photo: still from the film.
During the filming of the series “Llamada Eterna” he was nicknamed “El Carro Eterno”. The filming of the two parts (now they would probably be called “two seasons”) lasted ten years. The entire 20th century was covered on the screen: from the pre-revolutionary era to the military era and state collective farms. The series began in 1976 (filming began more than two years earlier) and ended in 1984. “Eternal Call” was then repeated regularly and continues to be repeated, sometimes in its original form, sometimes in re-edited form.
What can we say today about the work of Vladimir Krasnopolsky and Valery Uskov? Now we will not be transported back to the years when the series was incredibly popular and we will not fully understand how it was perceived then. Today, during reruns, we see the positive Polycarp, played by Pyotr Velyaminov, in the center of the plot. A very good actor, who here, unfortunately, looks like faded cardboard. And next to him is Vadim Spiridonov in the role of Fedor, an aggressive and jealous traitor, always armed like an explosive mechanism.
He was definitely “bad”, a real bastard. And, as expected, the hero began to be confused with the artist. The endless series of Uskov and Krasnopolsky gave the tall and handsome Spiridonov a bad reputation, and Evgeny Matveev’s film “Earthly Love” only reinforced it. There the actor also had his own Fedor – a fist. And the viewer completely believed him. Even the taxi drivers, after the “Eternal Call”, after taking a closer look at the passenger Spiridonov, tried to throw him out of the car shouting: “Why did you betray your brother?” And rumors spread among people about his mafia past (which, of course, was fiction).
Vadim Spiridonov in the film “The Youth of Peter”
Photo: still from the film.
The actor also had heroic roles, he even played Budyonny, but “Eternal Call” and “Earthly Love” absorbed everything. Too authentic. Too much anger. He played as he might have done in Shakespeare’s tragedies, but he did not have this happiness.
Vadim Spiridonov spent many years with this bastard inside. And when the evil Fedor was finally destroyed on screen, I felt abandoned. Yes, he played the villain, but he gave it his all. We need to play Fedor in his youth; please, we evaporate the kilograms in the bathhouse and shave our chests. Tomorrow we need Fedor at forty years old: Vadim Spiridonov will gain weight. And so all the time. Running barefoot through a mountain river: yes too…
For Fedor he received the State Prize of the USSR. Of course, together with the entire film crew, but still it’s a kind of achievement: somehow they didn’t give awards for negative roles. And today, if you accidentally watch “Eternal Call” on TV, you will not fall asleep only in two cases: if Efim Kopelyan (appears at the beginning of the epic) or Vadim Spiridonov are on the screen.
Vadim Spiridonov in the film “Hot Snow”
Photo: still from the film.
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In his personal life, it seems that everything was calm and calm. He lived with his wife for more than twenty years. Love is almost a watercolor: a boy and a girl saw each other in Sokolniki and the boy threw a snowball at the girl. And then we met, a few years later, in some cultural center, and someone was walking down the hall and someone was sitting on the windowsill, smiling in such a way that it was impossible not to meet again.
They got married. He was two years younger, although he looked older. He had his own decent life and a fiancé, the son of a diplomat and himself a potential diplomat. But at the age of 19, Spiridonov gave his word to his beloved Valentina, and until the end of their days they were together. Vadim studied at VGIK on the same course as Natalya Belokhvostikova, Natalya Bondarchuk, Natalya Arinbasarova and Natalya Gvozdikova (this course was even nicknamed the “four Natalias course”). And he didn’t give his beloved a single reason to be jealous in front of all these Natalia; On the contrary, he himself was jealous of her.
He also tried to become a director and directed the short film “Two Men.” He worked in dubbing; for example, he was the voice of Depardieu in the films “Papas” and “Unlucky.” He also dubbed Baltic artists in “Tony Wendice’s Mistake” and “The Perfect Crime.” She had a beautiful voice and fantastic looks; I had it all. But one day, on December 7, 1989, at the age of 45, he fell asleep and did not wake up. Doctors told his widow, Valentina Sergeevna, that such a death occurs in a hundred thousand. The blood clot dislodged, entered the valve, and slammed the heart shut forever. By the way, Spiridonov himself predicted that he would die on December 7. It is true that he thought he would be 47 years old. I was wrong by two years, but not by a single calendar day.
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