Irina Skobtseva

Who is Irina Skobtseva?

Irina Konstantinova Skobtseva is a Russian/Soviet actress, wife of Sergei Bondarchuk, and mother of Elena and Fyodor Bondarchuk.

She first met Sergei shooting Othello in 1955, and became his second wife in 1959. She starred as Pierre Bezukhov's wife Elena Kuragina Bezukhova in the juggernaut War and Peace - a husband-wife pairing, as Pierre was played by Sergei himself. She also had a small cameo role in Waterloo as a French woman who followed her husband to the battlefield, in 1970.

She semi-retired in the 1980s, but has made some appearances on television since.