Nina Popova

Nina Georgievna Popova (20 March 1945 to 7 September 2026) was a Soviet and Russian actress of theatre, film and television, and an Honoured Artist of the RSFSR. She is not the Soviet politician Nina Vasilyevna Popova, not the silent-film actress Nina Alekseevna Popova, and not the Anna Akhmatova Museum director Nina Ivanovna Popova. For sixty years she served one company, the Moscow Drama Theatre named after A. S. Pushkin, and she became nationally known as the weaver Zhenya Yakusheva in Day by Day (Den za dnyom), the first Soviet multi-part television serial.

She was born on 20 March 1945 in Bugulma, in the Tatar ASSR (now Bugulma, Tatarstan, Russia). Her father, Georgy Ivanovich Popov, worked at the All-Russian Theatrical Society and later directed a factory that made theatrical and makeup supplies. As a girl of about twelve she spent summers at the Polenovo pioneer camp with pupils of the Bolshoi Theatre school, because of her father's post. She later said the camp mixed discipline with a "fantastic atmosphere": MXAT School-Studio students as leaders, Elvis Presley on the record player, and tea at the Polenov estate. Her father died while she was in the tenth class. He already knew she would be an actress. Her mother's name was not given in the published interview. Popova entered the MXAT School-Studio on 30 June 1962, her mother's birthday, and called that her gift to her mother.

She chose the Moscow Art Theatre school without hesitation. She also auditioned for Boris Zakhava at the Shchukin Institute, reading Yevtushenko, and was invited to a further round, but she insisted on the School-Studio. Her course head was Alexander Mikhailovich Karev. Speech teachers included Dmitry Zhuravlev and Anna Nikolaevna Petrova. Visitors to the school included Solzhenitsyn, Voznesensky and Yevtushenko. She later called those four years "the main happiness in life."

In a student production of Leonid Leonov's The Snowstorm (Metel), banned in 1939 and revived in the 1960s, she rehearsed Zoya. Rector Veniamin Radomyslensky sent her downstairs to meet "an extraordinary, handsome man." It was Boris Ravenskykh, short and, she said, funny, offering her the same role at the Pushkin Theatre. She graduated in 1966 and joined the company at once, on Ravenskykh's invitation. The theatre production of The Snowstorm opened in 1967 after long rehearsals that sometimes ran from late morning until five in the morning. She stayed with that company until her death.

On screen she debuted in 1968 as Irina in Vladimir Berenshtein's Neutral Waters. The role that made her a household name came in 1971-1972: Zhenya Yakusheva, wife of Kostya and a weaver, in Day by Day, written by Mikhail Ancharov and directed by Vsevolod Shilovsky under the artistic leadership of Viktor Stanitsyn. She described it as a home-grown "saga" of a Moscow communal apartment, made after the British Forsyte Saga had been shown. Rehearsals were at the Moscow Art Theatre, then the cast went to the set. Partners included Alexei Gribov, Nina Sazonova, Vyacheslav Nevinny and Yuri Gorobets. She said city streets emptied during broadcasts and that flowers were left every day at the actors' doors. In 1971 she also played the director of a beer bar in Investigation Led by Experts, case No. 3, Caught Red-Handed (S polichnym). Later film and television work included Ksenia in High Rank (1973), the title role in Diamonds for Maria (1975), Anna Kuleshova in Two Days at the Beginning of December (1981), and Princess Vera Repnina in My Prechistenka (2006-2007).

On the Pushkin stage her range ran from Olga in Oskar Remez's Oblomov (her favourite production: "give me partners and I will start living in it again") to Mrs Boyle in Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap, Queen Elizabeth in Tom Stoppard's Shakespeare in Love, Jocasta in Sophocles' Oedipus, Abby in Eugene O'Neill's Desire Under the Elms, and Natalie Pushkina in Bulgakov's The Last Days. She also appeared at the Central House of Actors named after Yablochkina. In 2022, after fifty-six years on that stage, she told Ekran i stsena that she was still playing Stoppard and Christie and still hoped for a new role. Her last line of that interview was the one the theatre later used as the headline: "I am happy to be on stage."

She named Mikhail Ancharov, the writer, bard and author of Day by Day, as her first husband, and said she "could not be a writer's wife." A biography of Ancharov dates a registered marriage to 1969 and a separation to 1975. In 1975, on the Mosfilm set of Diamonds for Maria, she met cinematographer Boris Lvovich Brozhovsky (26 July 1935 to 14 January 2022), who worked with Mikhail Kalatozov, Pavel Chukhray, Alexander Proshkin and Karen Shakhnazarov and shared a 1989 USSR State Prize for The Cold Summer of 1953. She said she lived with him for forty-seven years, and that he was her happiness, her support and a true friend. They had a daughter, Dasha (Darya), and a granddaughter, Masha. Surnames of the daughter and granddaughter were not published in the 2022 interview. No other children are documented. Brozhovsky is buried at Vostryakovskoye Cemetery.

Honours followed the long service rather than a single hit. She was named Honoured Artist of the RSFSR in 1984. She received the Medal "In Commemoration of the 850th Anniversary of Moscow" (1997) and, by presidential decree of 19 February 2001 No. 205, the Medal of the Order "For Merit to the Fatherland" II class. Russian Wikipedia and the Kremlin decree name that medal, not the full Order. The theatre website sometimes says "Order", which is a different award. She also received the Medal "Veteran of Labour" (2010), a letter of thanks from the Metropolitan of Kursk and Rylsk (2016), a Moscow distinction for fifty years of impeccable service to the city (2017), and the Order of Friendship (2020), by presidential decree of 23 November 2020 No. 732.

On Monday 7 September 2026 the Pushkin Theatre held its season company meeting. Artistic director Yevgeny Pisarev said Popova was not there because she felt unwell, and that the company would send her their love and flowers: "Sixty years is no small thing." That evening the theatre announced that the Honoured Artist of the RSFSR had died at 81, after sixty years in the company. "This is a huge loss for us," the statement said. The cause of death was not made public. Colleague Inna Kara-Mosko told AIF that the death was sudden, that Popova had spent the summer at a dacha, and that she had spoken with friends the evening before and had planned to come to the opening of the season. Russian Wikipedia, edited on 8 September 2026, states that she died in Moscow and will be buried at Vostryakovskoye Cemetery beside her husband. At first report the theatre said the time of farewell would be announced later. A plot beside Brozhovsky was already reserved. Colleagues said a funeral was not expected before 10 September 2026. A clock time for the ceremony was not confirmed in the sources used here.