Rostislav Yaunovich Plyatt (30 November [13 December] 1908, Rostov-on-Don, Voyskoy Donskoy Oblast, Russian Empire - 30 June 1989, Moscow, RSFSR, USSR) was a Soviet film and theatre actor, a master of the spoken word (elocutionist). Hero of Socialist Labour (1989), People's Artist of the USSR (1961), winner of the USSR State Prize (1982). Commander of two Orders of Lenin (1978, 1989).
Rostislav Ivanovich Pliat was born on 30 November (13 December) 1908 in Rostov-on-Don. His early enthusiasm for the theatre led to the fact that at the age of 16, when receiving his passport, he deliberately changed his surname and patronymic to be more suitable for posters (as it seemed to him), becoming Rostislav Yanovitch Plyatt.
His father was a famous Rostov lawyer Ivan Iosifovich Pliat, by birth "a Pole, though heavily russetised", his mother was Zinaida Ivanovna Zakamennaya, a Ukrainian born in Poltava, who baptised her son into Orthodoxy. By the time Rostislav was born, she was already ill with pulmonary tuberculosis, and the family moved to Kislovodsk, to a milder climate. In his memoirs, Platt wrote:
"I was told that at my cradle came together two grandmothers - Josephine Felixovna, my father's mother, and Alexandra Lukinichna, my mother's mother - and began a quiet battle. One made sure that the child did not learn anything from the Khokhlak speech, the other, on the contrary, guarded the child's hearing from all kinds of Polonisms. Both succeeded: when I grew up, it turned out that I did not know any language except Russian."
In 1916, his mother died and his father moved to Moscow. A year later he married Anna Nikolayevna Velikovskaya, who replaced Rostislav's mother. He also had an older half-brother. His father's law practice was successful; among his clients were theatre workers. So the boy entered the theatre environment. He studied in the drama club, first under the guidance of Vladimir Lebedev, then - Varvara Sokolova-Zalesskaya, an artist of the Moscow Art Theatre, who introduced him to the system of Stanislavsky.
In 1926 he graduated from the 20th Thomas Edison Experimental School. In the same year he entered the Mosprofobra Drama Studio under the direction of Yuri Zavadsky, a year later reorganised into the Studio Theatre, where he played until 1936. Then, together with the entire troupe moved to Rostov-on-Don to work at the Gorky Drama Theatre. M. Gorky. Plyatt was a recognised comedy actor, created images with a sharp external drawing and brightly emphasised character, but the first major success on stage had the role of Von Ranken in the 1938 play "Days of Our Lives" by Leonid Andreev. This role revealed the actor's penchant for in-depth, psychologically subtle disclosure of character. In 1938, Plyatt returned to Moscow.
In 1938-1941 he served in the Lenin Komsomol Theatre. Since 1939 he began to work in cinema. One of the first and brightest roles was a bachelor in the children's comedy "Podkidysh". In this film he starred together with his long-term scene partner and close friend Faina Ranevskaya.
During the Great Patriotic War he was in Moscow. Over time, the actors of different theatres who remained in Moscow created the Moscow Drama Theatre, where they staged plays by Konstantin Simonov. In these war front plays Pljatt first showed himself as a master of psychological play.
In 1943 he moved to the Mossovet Theatre, where he served until the end of his days. The actor's work was characterised by intellectualism, the gift of internal reincarnation, irony, deep charm. He created a lot of memorable work on the radio, including in the programme "The Club of Famous Captains", to which he devoted 40 years.
Plyatt participated in dubbing films, in the voicing of cartoons. Performed in concerts, at anniversary and creative evenings, meetings with the audience. In the 1970s on television was prepared a series of programmes about Bernard Shaw ("Bernard Shaw's Theatre"), in which Bernard Shaw, played by Plyatt, talked with a literary scholar (Alexander Anikst).
He was a member of the All-Russian Theatre Society (since 1986 - the Union of Theatre Workers of the Russian Federation) and the Union of Cinematographers of the USSR in 1958-1989.
Rostislav Plyatt died on 30 June 1989 in Moscow at the age of 81. He is buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery. In Moscow, a memorial plaque was placed on the house 2/6 on Bolshaya Bronnaya Street, where the actor lived in 1969-1989.
