Lidiya Vertinskaya

Lidiya Vladimirovna Vertinskaya (Russian: Лидия Владимировна Вертинская), born Tsirgvava (Georgian: წირღვავა; Russian: Циргва́ва) (14 April 1923 – 31 December 2013) was a Soviet and Russian actress and artist.

Vertinskaya as Anidag (1964)

Vertinskaya was born of the emigre family of mixed Georgian-Russian origin in Harbin. Her paternal grandparents moved to China from Georgia along with their children while retaining Russian citizenship. Her father Vladimir Konstantinovich Tsirgvava was a Soviet official who served at the Chinese Eastern Railway. He died when Vertinskaya was nine years old. Her mother Lydia Pavlovna Tsirgvava (née Fomina), originally from a Siberian family of Old Believers, was a housewife.[1][2]

In 1940 she met the Russian singer Aleksandr Vertinsky in Shanghai. Although he was 36 years older than her, they got married in two years. In 1943 they emigrated to the Soviet Union. She gave birth to Marianna Vertinskaya (born 1943) and Anastasiya Vertinskaya (born 1944), both successful Russian actresses.

In 1955 she graduated from V. I. Surikov Art Institute and started working as an artist. From 1952 on she also appeared in a number of movies, mostly fairy tales. In 1957 Aleksandr Vertinsky died, and she never married again. In 2004 she published a book of memoirs The Blue Bird of Love.[1]

Lidiya Vertinskaya died on 31 December 2013 and was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow, near her husband.[3]