Nikita Sergeyevich Mikhalkov (in Russian: Никита Сeргеевич Михалков) was born in Moscow on October 21st 1945; he is a Russian actor, director, screenwriter and filmmaker. Probably the most famous Russian director together with Sergei Eisenstein and Andrej Tarkovsky. His father Sergei Vladimirovich Mikhalkov was a very famous poet and writer in Russia for having written the Russian national anthem. His mother Natalya Petrovna Končalovskaja was a poet and her father was the painter Petr Petrovich Koncalovskij, so as his uncle Vasily Surikov. Later his elder brother, Andrei Konchalovsky, became a film director like him. Nikita was still a child when he was studying to become an actor at the Moscow Art Theatre. He will also attend, starting from 1963, the Theatre School of Boris Schukin at the Vakhtangov Theatre. His debut as an actor was in 1959 and in 1964 he starred in the film Walking the Streets of Moscow directed by Georgy Danelija. Even once he became a director he has never abandoned his passion for acting. The transition to filmmaker didn’t happen leaving the first career too, in fact he enrolled at the VGIK, the State Cinematography School in Moscow, but at the same time he appeared as an actor in other films. His teacher is Michail Il'ič Romm. His first two shorts are Devochka i veshchi (“The girl and the things”) and And I go home. In 1970 his third short film entitled A Quiet Day During the End of the War, his essay for the course degree. Then he started writing stories for the Fitil magazine. In 1974 he made his debut film At Home Among Strangers. Public success came in 1976 with the film A Slave of Love, and two years later with An Unfinished Piece for a Player Piano, adapted from the play by Anton Chekhov's Platonov, in fact it won at the San Sebastián International Film Festival. After starring in his brother's film Siberiade, he directed Five Evenings and in 1979 Oblomov, from Ivan Aleksandrovič Gončarov's novel, his absolute masterpiece. He has been directed in some movies from Èldar Ryazanov and then he got international success with Oci ciornie (Dark Eyes) with Marcello Mastroianni. Urga – Territorio d’amore, in 1991, won the Golden Lion for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival. The film that will win the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film is instead Burnt by the Sun, in 1994, a story set in Stalin's Russia in the Thirties, where Nikita is also the protagonist with the role of a Colonel of the Russian Army. After The Barber of Siberia, where he interpreted Tsar Alexander III of Russia, he directed the remake, adapted to the Russian situation, of Sidney Lumet’s 12 Angry Men, and he titled it 12 as the number of jury members. It was presented in Venice in 2007 and Mikhalkov received the Special Lion for his whole work.
