Ramilya Iskander

Ramilya Rifovna Iskander (Рамиля Рифовна Искандер, Рамилә Риф кызы Хисамова; born 24 June 1977) is a Russian actress and former model who has acted mainly in theatre and television series. Since 2003, she has been a member of the regular cast of the Russian Academic Youth Theatre (RAMT) in Moscow.

Biography
Iskander was born in 1977 in the village of Kunashak, near the city of Chelyabinsk. She is an ethnic Tatar. Her father was an engineer and her mother was a teacher. Iskander was part of her school choir, where she was a solo singer. At the instance of her father, she studied economics at university for some time, but secretly applied for courses at the Chelyabinsk State Institute of Culture to study acting.

Iskander graduated in 1999 and began her acting career at the Chelyabinsk Youth Theatre. In 2002, Iskander moved to Moscow, where she initially starred in the Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko Theatre. The following year, she moved to the Russian Academic Youth Theatre, known as RAMT. She has been awarded the Moscow City Theater Prize 2013 and the Golden Lyre 2010, among others. In addition to her theatrical work, Iskander has acted in television series and commercials, as well as a voice actress in animations and dubbing of foreign language films. Her most significant film role to date is the female lead in the film Tsar (Царь, 2009) directed by Pavel Lungin, in which she starred Maria Temryukovna, the wife of Tsar Ivan the Terrible.

Iskander gave birth to her first son in August 2013.

On 14 September 2023 Rosbalt reported that bundles of substance of total of 1966 grams have been found in Iskander's house and hidden in the door of her car. She will be prosecuted according to article 228.1 part 5 Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (manufacture, sale or distribution of narcotics on a particularly large scale). Iskander pleaded guilty and on May 27th 2024 she was sentenced to 6.5 years of imprisonment in a corrective labor colony of common regiment for attempted distribution of narcotics on a particularly large scale.