Larisa Tarkovskaya

Larisa Tarkovskaya was born on 1 February 1933 in Moscow, then part of the Soviet Union, to engineer Pavel Vasilyevich Yegorkin and seamstress Anna Semyonovna, whose family originated from the village of Avdotyinka in Ryazan Oblast. Raised in a household that valued both technical precision and artistic sensibility, she pursued a career that bridged filmmaking and performance, initially working behind the scenes as a production assistant before transitioning to directing and acting. In 1958 she married engineer Igor Kizilov and gave birth to their daughter Olga, marking the start of her personal responsibilities that would later intertwine with her professional life. While serving as a production assistant on Andrei Rublev in the mid‑1960s, she met the renowned director Andrei Tarkovsky, and their collaboration soon blossomed into a romantic partnership; by 1970 Tarkovsky divorced his first wife and married Larisa, and that same year they welcomed their son Andrei Andreyevich, affectionately called Andriosha. Over the next two decades Larisa contributed significantly to her husband’s masterpieces, serving as assistant director on such seminal works as Solaris (1972), Mirror (1975), Stalker (1979) and Nostalghia (1983), often credited under variations of her name. Her on‑screen presence, though limited, included a memorable appearance as Nadejda in Mirror, demonstrating her versatility and deep understanding of Tarkovsky’s poetic vision.

After Andrei Tarkovsky’s death from lung cancer in 1986, Larisa continued to preserve his legacy, appearing in documentaries such as One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich (1987) and authoring a French‑language biography in 1997. Tragically, she herself succumbed to cancer on 19 January 1998 in Neuilly‑sur‑Seine, France, and was interred beside her husband at the Russian Cemetery in Sainte‑Geneviève‑des‑Bois. Throughout her life she embodied the creative spirit of Soviet cinema, navigating the roles of director, assistant director, actress, and writer while forging a personal narrative marked by artistic dedication and resilience.