Liya Akhedzhakova

Liya Mejidovna Akhedzhakova, born on 9 July 1938 in Dnepropetrovsk (present-day Dnipro, Ukraine), is a Soviet and Russian actress whose work spans film, stage, and voice performance. She appeared on Broadway in 1996 in Into the Whirlwind. In 1994, she received the title of People's Artist of Russia, and she has earned two Nika Awards for Best Supporting Actress as well as the 2014 Nika Honorary Prize.

Akhedzhakova was raised in Maykop in a family with deep theatrical roots. Her stepfather, Mejid Salehovich Akhedzhakov (1914–2012), was a Circassian nobleman who served as Principal Director of the National Theatre of the Republic of Adygea, and her mother, Yuliya Alexandrovna Akhedzhakova (1916–1990), was an actress at the same institution. At the age of ten, while her mother and aunt were ill with tuberculosis, she wrote a letter to Joseph Stalin requesting assistance, and a rare drug was subsequently delivered to her family. In 1956 she enrolled at the Moscow Institute of Nonferrous Metals and Gold, where she studied for eighteen months before pursuing her true vocation. She graduated from the Lunacharsky State Institute for Theatre Arts (GITIS) in 1962, having first appeared on stage the previous year at the Moscow Youth Theatre.

Her film debut came in 1973 with Ishchu cheloveka, a drama whose premiere earned prizes at international film festivals in Locarno, Switzerland, and Varna, Bulgaria. Akhedzhakova became widely recognized through her collaborations with director Eldar Ryazanov, playing Tania in The Irony of Fate (1975), Verochka in Office Romance (1977), Malaeva in The Garage (1979), and Fima in Promised Heaven (1991). In the 2000 film Old Hags, she appeared alongside her stepfather. In 1977 she joined the Sovremennik Theatre, where she remained a central figure for decades. In 1986 she took on four principal roles in the play Apartment Columbine, directed by Roman Viktyuk.

Akhedzhakova has been a prominent public voice on political matters in Russia. During the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis, on the night before the storming of the White House, she participated in a live broadcast at a reserve studio outside the Ostankino Technical Center, expressing support for Boris Yeltsin while criticizing the army and urging citizens to remain vigilant against a Communist return. Yeltsin later referenced her appearance in his memoirs. She has also protested the Russian law prohibiting adoption of Russian children by American citizens, spoken out on behalf of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Vasily Aleksanyan, and joined Eldar Ryazanov, Yuri Shevchuk, Andrey Makarevich, Andrei Konchalovsky, and others in opposing Russian policy toward Ukraine. Following the shootdown of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, she publicly read a poem by Andrey Orlov titled Requiem for MH17. In 2013 she received a prize from the Moscow Helsinki Group for the protection of human rights through culture and arts. She spoke out against the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, and in April 2023 Vitaly Borodin, head of the Federal Security and Anti-Corruption Project, asked Russia's Prosecutor General to open a criminal case against her, accusing her of treason and discrediting the armed forces. Akhedzhakova denied the allegations, and the accusations ultimately led to her departure from the Sovremennik Theatre.

In her personal life, Akhedzhakova's first husband was actor Valery Nosik, who performed at the Moscow Pushkin Drama Theatre and the Maly Theatre. Her second husband was artist and poet Boris Kocheishvili. In the summer of 2001 she married Moscow-based photographer Vladimir Persiyanov.