Anatoli Papanov

Anatoli Papanov — Biography

Anatoli Dmitriyevich Papanov was born on 31 October 1922 in Vyazma and died on 5 August 1987 in Moscow. He trained at the Russian Institute of Theatre Arts and began his stage career in 1946.

For nearly four decades he belonged to the company of Moscow's Satire Theatre, taking on duties as a drama instructor and stage director alongside his acting. Paired often with his close friend Andrei Mironov, he built a reputation chiefly through comic roles, though serious dramatic parts featured heavily in his work too, and he had served in the Second World War.

He voiced characters in over a hundred animated productions, most memorably the wolf in the long-running cartoon Nu, Pogodi!. The Soviet state recognized him with the People's Artist title in 1973, and a dramatic film performance brought him the State Prize of the USSR after he had died.