Georgiy Millyar

Biography

Georgiy Millyar is a Soviet theater and film actor. Georgiy was born in Moscow in the family of French bridge engineer Franz de Millieu, a native of Marseille, who came to Russia to work. The father died in 1906 in Yalta, when his son was not even three years old. Mother was the daughter of an Irkutsk gold miner Elizaveta Zhuravlyova. The boy's childhood was spent in prosperity, he was raised by French governesses, studied languages, music, and read a lot. He was interested in art since childhood. His aunt, a theater actress, instilled in him a love for theater. Already at the age of seven, the future actor tried to apply makeup for the first time, trying to transform into Mephistopheles from Faust. In the 1920s, after finishing school, Millyar was hired at the Gelendzhik theater as a prop man. The beginning of his acting career happened suddenly, due to the illness of the performer. The unexpected debut was successful, he was introduced into the already ongoing repertoire and began to appear in new productions. So he became one of the leading actors of the theater. In 1924, he had already become a famous provincial actor and entered the Junior School at the Moscow Theater of the Revolution (now the Mayakovskiy Theater). Despite his success in the theater, he continued to dream of a career in cinema. However, his first appeals to the film studio, including to Aleksandr Rou, were unsuccessful. The actor failed his first audition due to anxiety. The actor began his film career with episodes in several films. A long-term friendship began between the director and Millyar. Aleksandr Rou cast the actor in all of his films, often in several roles simultaneously. The most characteristic image for him was the heroine of Russian fairy tales, Baba Yaga. For the first time, the actor appeared in the image of Baba Yaga in the fairy tale film Vasilisa the Beautiful (1940). Initially, many actresses auditioned for the role of Baba Yaga, including Faina Ranevskaya, but Rou could not find a suitable candidate and turned to Millyar for advice. In 1944, Millyar played the role of Kashchey the Immortal in the film of the same name. He played with virtually no makeup, using his extremely thin physique and famous voice. After this film, Millyar, in his words, became "the official representative of evil spirits in cinema". Millyar's performance received high marks from experts. Each of his roles became a small masterpiece. Millyar was a character actor, a master of the grotesque and buffoonery. His unique voice, rattling like an old man, breaking into a belly sniffle, was perfectly suited for fairy-tale villainous roles (Baba Yaga or Koschey the Immortal).