Valery Sergeyevich Zolotukhin

Valery Sergeyevich Zolotukhin was a Soviet and Russian theater and film actor, People's Artist of the RSFSR. He was born on June 21, 1941 in Bystroye Istok, Altai Krai, into a peasant family — the kolkhoz chairman Sergey Illarionovich and Matryona Fedoseyevna Zolotukhin. From childhood he dreamed of becoming an actor, and in 1958 he entered the musical comedy department of GITIS, which he graduated from in 1963. After graduating he worked for a year at the Mossovet Theatre, and from 1964 became an actor at the Taganka Theatre. On that stage he played many iconic roles — Wang in "The Good Person of Szechwan", Grushnitsky in "A Hero of Our Time", Fyodor Kuzkin in "The Living", Alceste in "The Misanthrope", as well as Mephistopheles and Faust in "The Feast During the Plague".

The actor's film debut took place in 1965 — he played the leading role in the film "Paket". Valery Zolotukhin actively appeared in films and gained wide recognition thanks to roles in the trilogy "The Master of the Taiga", "The Disappearance of the Witness", "Preliminary Investigation", as well as the leading role in the film "Bumbarash". In 1994, together with human rights activist Galina Volina, he created the Charitable Public Foundation for the Support of Creativity (after the actor's death the foundation bears his name). Valery Sergeyevich Zolotukhin passed away in Moscow in 2013.