Fadeeva, Elena Alekseevna

Born Mar. 12 (25), 1914, in Moscow. Soviet Russian actress. People’s Artist of the USSR (1978).

Fadeeva graduated from the school of the Evg. Vakhtangov Theater in 1937 and made her debut at the Moscow Lenin Komsomol Theater in 1938. From 1941 to 1943 she performed at the front with an affiliate of the Vakhtangov Theater.

An actress of wide range, Fadeeva has created vivid portrayals of lyric and profoundly dramatic, as well as satiric, characters. Her roles have included Verochka in Turgenev’s A Month in the Country, Bella in a stage version of Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend, Liusia Vedernikova in Arbuzov’s Years of Wandering, the title role in Shaw’s Saint Joan, and Shabunina in Lavrenev’s To Those Who Are at Seal She has also appeared as Liza Protasova in L. N. Tolstoy’s The Living Corpse, Roxanne in Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac, Baroness von Tretnow in an adaptation of Feuchtwanger’s Double, Double, Toil and Trouble, and Golu-beva in Shatrov’s My Hopes. In the films A Mother’s Heart and A Mother’s Fidelity she played the role of Mariia Aleksandrovna Ul’ianova.

Fadeeva was a deputy to the eighth and ninth convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Fadeeva received the State Prize of the USSR in 1968 and the Lenin Komsomol Prize in 1978.