Alisa Brunovna Freindlich (born 8 December 1934) is a Russian actress. Since 1983, Freindlich has been a leading actress of the Bolshoi Drama Theater in Saint Petersburg, Russia. She was awarded the title of the People's Artist of the USSR in 1981.
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Biography
Alisa Freindlich was born into the family of Bruno Freindlich, a prominent actor and People's Artist of the USSR. She is of German and Russian ancestry. Her father and paternal relatives were ethnic Germans living in Russia for more than a century. In her childhood years, Freindlich attended the drama and music classes of the Leningrad Palace of Pioneers. During World War II, she survived the 900-day-long Nazi siege of Leningrad and continued her school studies after the war.
In the 1950s, Freindlich studied acting at the Leningrad State Institute of Theatre, Music and Cinema, graduating in 1957 as an actress. From 1957 to 1961, she was a member of the troupe at Komissarzhevskaya Theatre in Leningrad. Then she joined the Lensovet Theatre company, but in 1982, she had to leave it following her divorce from the theatre's director, Igor Vladimirov. Thereupon, director Georgy Tovstonogov invited her to join the troupe of the Bolshoi Drama Theater.
Although Freindlich put a premium on her stage career, she starred in several notable movies, including Eldar Ryazanov's enormously popular comedy Office Romance (1977), the long-banned epic Agony (1975) and Andrei Tarkovsky's sci-fi movie Stalker (1979). Another notable role was Queen Anne of Austria in the Soviet TV series D'Artagnan and Three Musketeers (1978) and its later Russian sequels, Musketeers Twenty Years After (1992) and The Secret of Queen Anne or Musketeers Thirty Years After (1993).
