Irina Kupchenko

Irina Petrovna Kupchenko (Ирина Петровна Купченко; born 1 March 1948 in Vienna) is a Soviet and Russian stage and film actress. She rose to prominence after acting in Andrei Konchalovsky's 1969 movie adaptation of A Nest of Gentry. She has performed in more than forty films since 1969.

Her performance in Lonely Woman Seeks Life Companion won her a Best Actress award at the Montreal World Film Festival.

She also played Alexandre in The Last Night of the Last Tsar, a play that was based on the book The Last Tsar: The Life and Death of Nicholas II by Edvard Radzinsky.

Biography
She was born in Vienna in a military family that, after the withdrawal of the Soviet Army in Austria (1955), moved to Kyiv. In childhood, Irina showed an interest in ballet. After high school, she initially studied foreign languages at the University of Kyiv, but after her debut in the role of Liza in A Nest of Gentlefolk, she decided to pursue a career in acting. She graduated from the Shchukin Theatre Institute in Moscow (1970) and began working in the Moscow Vakhtangov Theatre (1971).

Personal life
She was married to actor Vasily Lanovoy until his death in 2021.

Honors and awards

 * Honored Artist of the RSFSR (1980)
 * Lenin Komsomol Prize (1981)
 * People's Artist of the RSFSR (1989)
 * Order of Honour (1999)
 * State Prize of the Russian Federation (2002)
 * Order of Friendship (2019)