As a teenager, he joined a partisan detachment, participated in combat operations of a reconnaissance group, and was wounded. And in 1944 he already appeared on the stage of the Voroshilovgrad Drama Theater... The biography of Pavel Luspekayev is in itself the plot for an entire novel. Actually, film director Vasily Ermakov wrote it. This is not just an outside view. An actor of original talent and powerful temperament appears on the pages of his book as an earthly man to whom nothing is alien, a strong, extraordinary personality capable of self-sacrifice. The artist lived only 43 years. A serious illness forced me to part with my favorite stage of the Bolshoi Drama Theater. All that was left was the movie. After the amputation of his second foot, he played the role of the legendary customs officer Vereshchagin in V. Motyl’s film “White Sun of the Desert,” which brought him real triumph. And it is still simply impossible to believe that a terminally ill actor was acting in the role of this big hero.