The heroes of this book are actors who are actually known to everyone. Even if you don’t remember their last names, their faces will remind you of your favorite films, episodes and phrases that have become catchphrases. Their fates most fully reflect the passing era, the entire 20th century, which brought Russia a lot of joy and sorrow. This is pre-revolutionary life, and the revelry of the NEP, and the time of repression, and front-line roads, and the hardships of evacuation, and Khrushchev’s “thaw”, and the “Iron Curtain”, and emigration, love and betrayal, stellar laurels and grave oblivion, creative throwing and collapse of hopes , and, of course, the entire history of Russian cinema. And also Eisenstein, Yesenin, Protazanov, Meyerhold, Sholokhov, Kapler, Romm, Shchukin, Orlova, Bersenev, Akimov, Kozlovsky, Ranevskaya, Birman, Gaidai - they can also be called heroes of the book, because their participation in the destinies of the main characters is very great.< /p>