Vera Altayskaya

Who was Vera Altayskaya?

Vera Vladimirovna Altayskaya was a Soviet actress known for her roles in children's fairy tale films and comedies.

Born in Petrograd, she was the adoptive daughter of Konstantin Altaysky-Korolyov, a poet and translator, and his wife Vera Petrovna, a pianist. In the late 1930s she moved to Moscow, where in 1940 she graduated from drama school at the Mosfilm studio and joined the studio's repertoire of actors. Her first prominent role was in Yuli Raizman's 1942 film Mashenka.

She married Aleksei Konsovsky, a fellow actor, with whom she had a daughter, Svetlana. In recognition of her film work during the 1940s she received the Medal "For Valiant Labour in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945".

In Mashenka, Altayskaya had played a young beauty, but she later transitioned to character roles. For most of her career, she was typecast as shrewish or matronly characters. She appeared in many children's fairy-tale films, most notably Aleksandr Rou's 1964 film Jack Frost, in which she played a domineering stepmother. She died in Moscow after a brief illness, and her ashes are interred in the columbarium of Vagankovo Cemetery alongside those of her adoptive parents.