Lanovoy came to prominence through playing bold, dashing characters, combining heroic bravado with a sensitivity typical of Russian heroes, a tendency evident in many of his early features, such as Certificate of Maturity (1954) and Pavel Korchagin (1956).
Lanovoy's many film roles from the 1960s include Anatole KuragininSergei Bondarchuk's War and Peace and Count Vronsky in the screen version of Anna Karenina. By this time, he has tried to create complex psychological portraits of his characters.
However, he is best known for his roles in iconic 1970s World War II-themed films. Lanovoy portrayed Ivan Varavva, one of the main characters in the 1971 saga Officers which became a life-affirming film for the Soviet Army officers. He also played a supporting role of SS General Karl Wolff in the cult spy thriller TV-series Seventeen Moments of Spring (1973).
In 2000s, Lanovoy appeared primarily in the roles of Soviet-era party bosses, such as Yuri Andropov in the 2005 TV film Brezhnev. In 2013, he played the role of Cardinal Richelieu in Russian movie The Three Musketeers.
He was critical of the (late 2013 until early 2014) Ukrainian Euromaidan demonstrations, claiming that the United States were using Ukrainians for their own political gain.[6]
Lanovoy was born to a family of Ukrainian peasants. His parents, originally from the rural Odesa Oblast, escaped the famine to Moscow. However, the World War II Nazi/Romanian occupation caught little Vasily in southern Ukraine with his village relatives while his parents were evacuated to the Soviet rear as workers with a military-critical industrial company.
2004 – Order of Merit, 3rd class (Ukraine) - for high professionalism and considerable contribution to the development of Russian-Ukrainian cultural relations
2008 – Order "For Merit to the Fatherland", 3rd class - for his contribution to the development of domestic theatrical and cinematic arts, a multi-year social work
2008 – Special Prize of the President of Belarus "for preserving and developing traditions of spirituality in the cinema"
2009 – "Great Literary Prize of Russia" (Russian Writers' Union), the prize "For the benefit of Russia" for his outstanding contribution to the development of Russian culture
2014 – Order of Merit, 2nd class (Ukraine) - for a significant personal contribution to the socio-economic, scientific and technical, cultural and educational development of the Ukrainian state
Media related to Vasily Lanovoy at Wikimedia Commons
