Valentina Vladimirova

Valentina Vladimirova was a popular Russian character actress best known for White Bim Black Ear (1977).

She was born Valentina Kharlampievna Vladimirova on 22 November 1927, in Vasilevka village near Odessa, Ukraine, USSR. After the war, she became a student at Kharkov Institute of Engineering and Economics and studied Economics and Accounting for two years. While a student, she caught the acting bug and dropped out from college. Pursueing an acting career, Vladimirova came to Moscow. There she studied acting at Soviet State Institute for Cinema (VGIK) graduating in 1955 as actress, from the class of Boris Bibikov and Olga Pyzhova.

She made her film debut in Pervyy eshelon (1956) by director Mikhail Kalatozov, who also cast Vladimirova in The Cranes Are Flying (1957). After such a successful start, Vladimirova went on to work with the best Russian film directors, such as, Mikhail Shvejtser, Boris Barnet, Nikolay Dostal, Aleksei Saltykov, Aleksandr Dovzhenko, Vladimir Fetin, Nikolai Rozantsev, Vladimir Krasnopolsky, Eldar Ryazanov, Leonid Menaker, Iosif Kheifits, Yevgeni Matveyev, Ilya Averbakh, Stanislav Rostotskiy, and other notable directors. Her best known role was opposite Vyacheslav Tikhonov in White Bim Black Ear (1977) by director Stanislav Rostotskiy.

Valentina Vladimirova was designated Honored Actress of Russian Federation (1969). She was living with her husband in a suburb of Moscow. She died of a heart failure on 23 March 1994, in Moscow, and was laid to rest in Vagankovskoe cemetery in Moscow, Russia.