TOP TEN ACTORS IN RUSSIAN ROLES

① AKIM TAMIROFF

A one-man United Nations, Tamiroff, born in Baku and a graduate of the Moscow Art Theater troupe, played characters of many nationalities in a prolific and steady Hollywood career that lasted for nearly 40 years. With what Newsweek called “the thickest Russian accent this side of Minsk,” Tamiroff was usually cast in the role of a sidekick (often as Mexicans or Spaniards). As Russians, his best performances came as the scheming gold-digger Boris Chernov in Anastasia and as the perpetually harried Soviet ambassador in Romanoff and Juliet.

② GRETA GARBO

She might have been Swedish, but Garbo was cast repeatedly as a Russian character. For Hollywood casting directors, foreign accents were fairly interchangeable. Languid and world-weary, Garbo starred as the doomed adulteress Anna Karenina in two versions of Tolstoy’s novel (1927 and 1935), and was memorable in the small role of the temperamental ballerina Grushinskaya in Grand Hotel (1932) – where she uttered what became her trademark line “I want to be alone.” But it was her transformation from prim Soviet commissar to fun-loving capitalist in Ninotchka that was the highpoint of her “Russian” career. 

③ MARLENE DIETRICH

Many noted actresses attempted the plum role of Tsarina Catherine the Great (Tallulah Bankhead, Louise Dresser, Jeanne Moreau), but none pulled it off with more élan, confidence or sexual innuendo than the great German actress and bombshell Marlene Dietrich. It helped that she worked on The Scarlet Empress with her long-time collaborator and Russophile, Joseph von Sternberg, whose original title for the film was Her Regiment of Lovers.

④ OMAR SHARIF AND JULIE CHRISTIE 

As the Hamlet-like Yuri Zhivago and his poetic love Lara in David Lean’s sumptuous 1965 film version of Boris Pasternak’s Nobel-prize winning novel, Sharif (an Egyptian) and Christie (an Englishwoman) inhabited their roles so passionately and so expansively that they became Russians in the eyes of millions. For many of the Cold War generation, they gave Russia a human face.

⑤ MISCHA AUER

Grandson of the famous violinist Leopold Auer, Mischa (born Mikhail Ounskowski in St. Petersburg) had a nomadic childhood in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution before finally settling in Los Angeles, a city he loved: “You can live on oranges and credit, and have a car to boot.” Auer brought to the screen a unique, zany comic sensibility. His most famous role was as the social parasite Carlo in My Man Godfrey, where he sang Ochi Chernye (“Dark Eyes”) with maniacal repetition to the vast amusement of Manhattan socialites. He reprised this role (as a Russian ballet master) in You Can’t Take It With You.

⑥ YUL BRYNNER

Brynner was Hollywood’s first Russian émigré leading man. Born of a Russian mother and a Swiss-Mongolian father, Brynner grew up in China before moving to Paris and then to the U.S. He became a star as The King in The King and I on Broadway, and was thereafter often cast in royal roles, such as Pharoah Ramses in The Ten Commandments. But Brynner also “played Russian” on screen on numerous occasions: as Bunin in Anastasia, as wild Dmitri in The Brothers Karamazov, and as a Soviet general in The Journey. In Taras Bulba, adapted from Gogol’s story, he switched sides to become an anti-Russian, Ukrainian chieftain. With his trademark bald head, gypsy manners and excellent singing abilities, Brynner exploited his larger-than-life image to the hilt.

⑦ ROBIN WILLIAMS

Early in his film career, versatile character actor Williams “played Russian” as the defector protagonist of Moscow on the Hudson. It is one of the most masterful screen portrayals of the downtrodden Soviet everyman of the Brezhnev years. Williams learned Russian well enough to speak it quite credibly in the film’s Moscow scenes, and captured the amazement of Soviet citizens confronted with the diversity and abundance of New York City. In 1995, he again put on a Russian accent to play the crazed obstetrician Dr. Kosevich in the romantic comedy Nine Months. 

⑧ VLADIMIR SOKOLOFF

Another product of the Moscow Art Theater, Sokoloff emigrated from Russia to Berlin and then to America, where he made his film debut as the painter Cezanne in The Life of Emile Zola. Athletically trim, highly disciplined and extremely versatile, he appeared memorably in small Russian roles in Comrade X (opposite Clark Gable and Hedy Lamarr), and in the pro-Soviet World War II films Mission to Moscow (as Soviet President Mikhail Kalinin) and Song of Russia. In his last film, he played a Cossack in Taras Bulba. Thrown from his mount during filming in Argentina, he incurred injuries that contributed to his death a few months later.

⑨ MICHAEL CHEKHOV

The nephew of Anton Chekhov, Michael studied with Stanislavsky and worked in the theater for many years before moving to Hollywood in 1943 and beginning his short film career. In Song of Russia, he joined numerous other Russian émigré actors, playing the kindly director of the local music school. In Hitchcock’s 1945 masterpiece Spellbound, Chekhov plays the (apparently) Russian psychiatrist Alex Brullov, mentor to Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck. With his strong Russian accent, Chekhov told friends he feared becoming nothing more than “an accent clown.”

⑩ JANET LEIGH

We remember her best for the shower scene in Hitchcock’s Psycho, but earlier in her career, the sexy and enigmatic Leigh starred twice in high-profile Russian roles. In Red Danube she was a Soviet prima ballerina (a German/Russian) living in Vienna after World War II, hoping to avoid repatriation to the USSR: “Millions of Russians no longer believe what they are told officially, but they can do no more about it than I can.” A few years later, she took to the skies as the Soviet pilot Anna Marladovna in Josef von Sternberg’s confused Jet Pilot. Here, she pretends to defect to the U.S. in order to gain top-secret information, but falls in love with John Wayne instead. One of the film’s highlights is her rendition (in the shower again!) of the Soviet World War II army song “Polyushko, polye.”