Ukrainians
Prince vasili war and peace.
Vasili Lanovoy was a notable Russian actor best known as Captain Grey in Alye parusa (1961) and as Anatol Kuragin in War and Peace (1965).
He was born Vasili Semenovich Lanovoy on January 16, 1934, in Moscow, Russia, USSR.
His parents were Ukrainian peasants from Odessa region.
Novodevichy cemetery
They escaped from death in the famine of 1931 and survived by moving to Moscow. At the age of 7, Lanovoy went to visit his relatives near Odessa, but there he was caught by the advancing Nazi Armies during the Second World War.
Young Lanovoy was abused by the Nazis who fired machine guns above his head to scare him, so he stammered for several years as a consequence. However, he had a dream of being an actor, regardless of his stammer and his heavy Ukrainian accent.
He attended the acting class of Sergei Lvovich Stein at Moscow ZIL club, and made his stage debut in a play by Lev Kassil.
Young Lanovoy was torn between two professions, acting and journalism, and entered to study both.
In 1953, at age 18, wh
