Vera Kholodnaya
actress
- Birth name:
- Vera Vasilyevna Levchenko
- Born:
- 1893-08-05, Poltava, Russian Empire [now Ukraine]
- Died:
- 1919-02-17, Odesa, Ukraine
- Professions:
- actress
Biography
A summer day in Poltava—5 August 1893—marked the arrival of Vera Kholodnaya, a girl who would grow up to become the silent screen’s first indisputable star. Before she turned twenty-two, cameras were already in love with her: in 1915 she haunted the frames of *Children of the Age*, and the following year she set audiences trembling in *Her Sister’s Rival*. By 1917, when *Capital Poison* hit theaters, her name alone could fill a cinema. Off-screen, she shared her life with fellow artist Vladimir Kholodny. Yet fame moved faster than history: on 17 February 1919, in Odesa, the flu that followed revolution claimed her at twenty-five, leaving behind a legacy as brief—and as bright—as a reel of nitrate flickering through a projector’s beam.
