Andrei Miagkov, the lead actor in the movie “Irony of Fate, or After the Bath,” died.

The 1976 romantic comedy, starring A. Miagkov, became a classic of Soviet cinema and is still seen in Russia and many countries of the former Soviet bloc on New Year’s Eve.

Representatives of the Moscow Academic Art Theater (MChAT) told the press that the life of the “great actor, loved by the people” who had worked in the theater for decades, died early Thursday morning.

The cause of death was not reported. Some Russian media reports that the actor died of heart failure.

A.Miagkov was born in 1938 in what was then Leningrad, now in Saint Petersburg. As a child, during World War II, he survived the blockade of this city.

Early in his acting career, he joined the Moscow Sovremennik Theater company, which was founded by young independent actors after the death of Joseph Stalin.

In 1977, Miagkov moved to MChAT, the best-known drama theater in the country, where he performed for many years, and later became a teacher and director of this theater studio.

Although the most important roles of A.Miagkov were brought by his roles in the cinema.

He has starred in a number of films by famous director Eldar Ryazanov, including “The Irony of Fate,” where he played the role of a Moscow-based surgeon who unexpectedly found himself in Leningrad after a bath with friends, but still believes he is still there. in Moscow.

The film, which gently pokes fun at Soviet-era planning of residential areas, suggesting that they all look the same, has become a cult film that is still watched by millions of people during the New Year in Russia.

A.Miagkov, along with a group of other stars, starred in the 1977 film “The Novel”, where he played a statistician who decided to pursue a career after remembering his boss, who played another movie star, Alisa Freindlich.

During his decades of acting career, A. Miagkov has created more than 50 roles on stage and in cinema.

According to MChAT, in recent years A.Miagkov and his wife, actress Anastasia Voznesenskaya, no longer performed in the theater and “lived apart, dedicated to each other.”