"My hero has a keen sense of his destiny - to defend his homeland."
On January 1, the movie "Finist. The First Bogatyr" - a prequel to "The First Bogatyr". The picture about characters from Russian fairy tales turned out to be dynamic, colorful, with an oriental flavor, it has a lot of action and has its own philosophy. The main role played by Kirill Zaitsev, already loved by viewers in a successful movie universe. In an exclusive interview with Izvestia, the actor stood up for his hero, proving that he is not an arrogant handsome man, but a true patriot of Belogorye. And also told how the military past and Chinese martial arts helped him in creating the image and what kind of sweet "trials" he had to go through on the set.
"My master used to say: "Kyra, you are very handsome."
- Your hero is a proud man who loves himself very much. Have you met such people in your life?
- I generally do not find anything wrong in the fact that a person loves himself.
- Finiste is very arrogant.
- You're imagining it. My hero feels very keenly his destiny - to defend his homeland and if he dies, it's in battle. And he wants the storytellers to write legends about it. It's like any actor needs a movie where he would show all his power, get creative satisfaction, needs a role for which he would be awarded the Golden Eagle, Cannes Lions, Palme d'Or and Oscar.
Actor Kirill Zaitsev
- Are you looking forward to those awards, too?
- Oscars? Why not? Just for a Russian movie. I'm also hungry for good scripts.
- Did your mother say to you as a child: "What a handsome boy you are, Kirill"?
- No. She praised me if I did something well. When they say to me: "You're handsome", I immediately think - did I play well? My master Elena Igorevna Chernaya, when she wanted to demonstrate irony and subtext, would say: "Kira, you are very beautiful. "Let's sayYevgeny Leonov is handsome? Or Anatoly Papanov?
- They're charming.
- Exactly, charm. Vasily Lanovoi is handsome for me, but he is also a powerful, outstanding actor. It's not beauty that is memorable, but talent. It's the strongest magnet.
- When you played the military, did the experience of studying at the Naval Academy come in handy?
- I went to the Naval Academy when I was 17. I spent six years in uniform. I understand what the regulations are. We sewed our own chevrons and epaulettes. And the stitches had to be such that the commander would not come up to you, put his finger there and rip them out. We competed to see who had the best ironed uniform, the most evenly worn helmet, the best shined boots.
- You speak so fondly of your military past. Why did you change your profession?
- The passion for acting won out. I could have been a ship's captain like my friends. After high school, I wanted to be either a sailor, a fireman or an actor. My mom said that artists have a difficult fate. She had seen programs about how former stars sometimes tragically ended their lives. That's why I chose the Naval Academy. But in the third year, I began to understand what this profession was all about.
A still from the set of "Finist. The First Bogatyr."
- What is?
- The enormous responsibility. The captain and chief mate are responsible for thousands of tons of fuel or liquefied gas if they manage a tanker. It's a floating bomb. And the wrong actions can lead to tragedy.
- Finist says of himself, "There's not a pig born yet that Finist wouldn't break a nickel on." And in what in general he feels superiority over others?
- Like any Russian bogatyr, his superiority is not only in physical strength, but also in strength of spirit, in the ability not to be discouraged under any circumstances. He lives with the knowledge that he is at the mercy of the sea.
- It's called hubris.
- Absolutely. The movie is also partly about the fact that you can't do big things alone. You can' t do it alone.
"At one point I said: "I can't take it anymore. "Let's have a real banana, I'll at least chew on it!"
- The Finist finds himself across the sea, where he tries bananas for the first time. How many of them did you have to eat during the shooting?
- I'll let you in on a little secret - I was "taken care of". They prepared marzipan bananas. They look the same. But I'd rather eat a banana with the peel on than a marzipan duplicate. It's so sweet! At one point I said: "I can't take it anymore. "Let's have a real banana. At least I'll chew on it."
- Where was the shooting?
- Steppes, mountains and deserts were filmed in Kazakhstan. It took a long time to get to the set on the roads and bumps. It's full of snakes and other creepy things. But an expedition is always good for a movie. We all became friends. The more difficult, the more fun we had. Constantly kept themselves in a light state.
- Yulia Peresild played a young Baba Yaga. Her heroine flies with the help of sorcery, but she herself has traveled through space ...
- I was very pleased to work with Yulia. Many people asked her: "Did you really fly?"
A still from the set of the movie "Finist. The First Bogatyr"
- So some of your colleagues had doubts?
-Yes. But what happened to her during the flight and afterwards, Yulia even described in her book. She is an example of a strong Russian woman who can fly into space, raise children, stop a horse at a skoku, and turn into Baba Yaga.
- Kirill, have you ever had star disease?
- If I hadn't gone through the academy school, maybe I would have. But I was a company commander in my first and second year, I had 150 men under my command. Respect for people is very important to me. Besides, as a director and producer I made the movie "Sashka. Diary of a Soldier", so I understand the complexities of the work of all the shops of film production. Star disease is to put yourself above others. But it interferes with the common cause. Konstantin Khabensky was once asked: "Oh, you starred with Angelina Jolie! And what is she like?" He told how she came to the set and asked where she should stand, if she could do like this. And if an actor is focused on whether he's appreciated enough, why he was given that chair, whether he's being filmed from that angle, then the work suffers.
- When you started shooting in "The Last Bogatyr", did you think that with your character will make a separate movie?
- No. You should never guess. It's like going to the casting and immediately think: "Aha, they shoot in May-June, so we need to cancel performances in June. That's stupid. Because the movie - a complex process. You need to find the money, locations, coincide schedules of actors. And then you need to bring the movie to the audience - advertising campaign is necessary. It happens that the picture turned out great, but went unnoticed by the public. So, something went wrong. For example, a very good plot tape "Master of the Seas" with Russell Crowe, and filmed it on a real sailing ship. But at the same time with it came out "Pirates of the Caribbean", on the success of which no one bet much. And now "Master of the Seas" few people will remember, but "Pirates" know everyone.
"To love yourself is, for example, not to sit on the phone half the night, but to give yourself a good night's sleep."
- Kirill, you have a diverse movie biography - from athletes to officers. Now you are also a fairy-tale bogatyr. What role do you still dream of?
- What I really want, I realize in the theater. The stage allows the actor to open up more, and the artist grows in the theater.
- You just had a premiere at the theater recently.
- Yes. The first production we did at the Sergei Vitalievich Bezrukov Foundation with Yelena Igorevna Chernaya was called My Lermontov. It's a mono-performance on Mikhail Yuryevich's poems. But there is also prose, and I sing romances. And recently the second performance was released, where I play together with opera singer Marie Bernard. It's called "My Onegin". In this production we realized Elena Igorevna's brilliant idea - we combined an opera by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and a novel in verse by Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin.
- When reading this, some of your young fans already thought: "Boring". How can you get young people interested in Pushkin, Onegin?
- It seems to me that if they come to the performance, they will be interested. They go to see Lermontov.
Kirill Zaitsev as Eugene Onegin in a scene from "My Onegin" directed by Elena Chernaya at the Moscow Gubernaya Theater's Small Stage
- How else can we make them read more? Including the classics.
- By their own parental example. The most effective way. When I was seven years old, seeing that my father constantly plays the guitar and sings and what an impression he makes on listeners, I asked him to teach me too. And I still love the guitar.
- And how modern is Pushkin, do you think?
- Well, start reading "Eugene Onegin". It's all about our life. "Whom shall we love, whom shall we trust? Who will not change us alone? Who measures all deeds, all speeches by our yardstick? Who does not sow slander against us? Who cherishes us with care? Who is not troubled by our faults? Who will never be bored? Phantom of the vanity seeker, who does not destroy his labors in vain, love yourself, my venerablereader! The subject is worthy: there is nothing kinder, indeed, there is none."
- Are self-love and self-love different things?
- I don't know what "self-love" is. And "loving yourself" means, for example, not sitting on the phone half the night, but letting yourself sleep, not eating fast food, but, let's say, ordering yourself some balanced food, going to the fitness center, to the swimming pool. Or at least do ten minutes of exercise every day.
-Do you exercise every day?
- I do.
- How do you have time for that, too?
- It's not so much time as discipline. For example, Alexander Zatsepin amazes me. He's98 years old. He exercises every day. And his lunch is half a cutlet and some garnish.
- Do you have such a lunch too?
- I have three patties. Otherwise, I'll collapse in two hours.
- In the movie "Commander" you played your namesake, the creator of the group "Alpha". Did you get any feedback from the fighters of this unit after the premiere?
- Those who served under him, called him the Pope. And they said that in life the Pope was even tougher than shown in the movie. But nevertheless in the image that I embodied on the screen, recognized this legendary commander. For me, this is above all praise.
A still from the movie "Commander."
- You do not miss the fact that you do not play bad guys? And after such positive characters, perhaps you will not be offered the role of a negative hero.
- I've had some ambiguous characters. I mean, you saw arrogance in Finiste. But you have to watch the movie and understand what happened to this character, what transformation happened to him.
- I mean such a negative character as your Arkady Trubetskoy from Silver Skates. He's a real antagonist.
- The man is just doing his job. We all say antagonist-antagonist, until the supposedly noble guys, who are shown in this movie, take our wallet out of our pocket.
- In this picture you played with Yura Borisov. He recently received a prestigious award in the U.S. and may be among the nominees for "Oscar". How do you feel about his career?
- This is the success of a Russian actor. I always say that we should not forget that our country is the birthplace of the great Russian psychological theater, the Stanislavsky school. And Hollywood has not forgotten how they once grasped Konstantin Sergeyevich and published his book on acting. And if you dig, DiCaprio is a quarter Russian ...
- Kirill, tell me, please, how will you celebrate the New Year?
- With my family.
- Do you have any traditions?
- The main tradition is to be together, to set the table together, to cut olivier.
- Do you decorate the Christmas tree? Is it live or artificial?
- When I was a child, it was alive, in a bucket with sand, in which I had to pour water to keep the needles from falling off. Now we dress up an artificial one with my son.
A still from the movie "Silver Skates."
- Have you already bought him presents?
- To understand what a child who already has a lot of different toys needs, we came up with this trick. Together with him to write a letter to Santa Claus and put it in the freezer.
- Did you write to Santa Claus as a child?
- No. I realized early on that presents come from my parents. One day I woke up and went to see what was under the tree. And it was empty, mom and dad decided that they would put them there when they woke up. I also remember the moment when at the age of seven I suddenly realized that we are all mortal. I asked my mom, "So what? Are you going to die and I'm going to die?" She told me: "Yes, that's the way the world works." It made me very sad, especially that people close to me would die too. But on the other hand, as my tai chi teacher says, think about death more often to appreciate the present moment.
- What is tai chi?
- It's a Chinese martial art. There are health complexes, and training with swords, with staffs.
- Did it help you on "Finist"?
- Preparation always helps. Stage combat requires a lot of training and precision so as not to hurt anyone.
A still from the set of the movie "Finist. The First Bogatyr"
- And how do you fight with drawn monsters, which are in the movie?
- Instead of a monster, the stuntman in front of you is a flexible guy in blue tights.
- Tell me, will "Finist" have a sequel?
- Not yet. We'll see how successful the movie will be at the box office and like the audience. God willing.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
