Mikhail Kozakov

Mikhail Kozakov was born in 1934 in Saint Petersburg

Kozakov was born in Leningrad in 1934, the youngest of three brothers. His father was a Jewish writer and playwright, and his mother, an editor of Serbian and Greek descent, was arrested in 1937 and in 1948. During the war he was evacuated to the Molotov Oblast and returned to Leningrad in 1944.

He graduated from the Moscow Art Theatre School in 1956. That year he appeared in Mikhail Romm's film Murder on Dante Street and played Hamlet at the Mayakovsky Theatre.

He acted at the Mayakovsky Theatre until 1959 and at the Sovremennik Theatre from 1959 to 1970, then at the Moscow Art Theater and the Theater on Malaya Bronnaya. He began directing films in 1978 and made The Pokrovsky Gate in 1982. He also recorded and performed poetry readings.

He immigrated to Israel in 1991 and worked at the Cameri Theater in Tel Aviv, acting in Hebrew. He returned to Russia in 1996 and founded his own theatre in Moscow. From 2003 he acted at the Mossovet Theatre.

He was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2010 and died in Israel in 2011. He was buried in Moscow near his father. He was married 5 times.