Klimova, Aleksandra Ivanovna

Born Oct. 1,1921, in the village of Zatobolovka, Kustanai Raion, Kustanai Oblast. Soviet Russian actress; People’s Artist of the USSR (1969).

Klimova graduated from the M. S. Shchepkin Theater School in 1949. She worked in the Magnitogorsk Theater from 1942 to 1945, the Odessa Theater from 1949 to 1951, the Lesia Ukrainka Kiev Theater from 1951 to 1953, and the Kharkov Russian Theater from 1953 to 1956. She has been with the M. Gorky Russian Theater of the Byelorussian SSR in Minsk since 1956.

Klimova has played both character parts and lyrical heroines. Her best early roles included Katia Redozubova in Gorky’s The Barbarians and Ania in Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard. She went on to mainly dramatic portrayals, including Vera Pavlovna in Extraordinary People (after N. G. Chernyshevskii’s novel What Is to Be Done?), Vera in The Precipice (after I. A. Goncharov’s novel of the same name), the Commissar in Vishnevskii’s Optimistic Tragedy, the title role in Trenev’s Liubov’ Iarovaia, Nila Snizhko in Salynskii’s The Drummer Girl, Rakitina in Virta’s Vast Distances, and Cleopatra in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. Klimova has been awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor and various medals.