Andrei Panin
(actor)

Andrei Panin is one of the most popular Russian actors of the last decade. Critics say that Mr. Panin is especially good at portraying colorful, elusive, slick characters with double standards, chameleons, at once cynical and conformist.

Andrei Panin is a Siberian, a sibiryak, which for Russians means a genetic combination of honor, perseverance and natural health. He was born May 28, 1962, in Novosibirsk, an industrial and scientific center in Western Siberia. Two years later his family moved to Chelyabinsk. When Andrei was six, the Panin family settled in Kemerovo, an industrial and mining city, and stayed there for 16 years. He graduated from the Institute of Culture and nearly earned a Bachelor’s degree from the Food Institute, which he quit. For a period of time he worked in a drama theatre in Minusinsk. In 1991 he graduated from the MkhAT Studio in Moscow, where he studied under the famous actor Aleksandr Kalyagin.

(Panin was invited to the prestigious Chekhov MKhAT Theater in Moscow. He played starring roles in several productions, including The Three Sisters (Solyony), The Covetous Knight, The Wedding, The Death-Defying Act (Smertelny Nomer), and a theatrical show, Winter. He acted in several productions of the Oleg Tabakov Theater. In 2003 he was hired by the Pushkin Drama Theater in Moscow.)

His first role in a full-length feature came in a 1992 movie called In a Straight Line (Po Pryamoi) by director Sergei Chlyants, which was a screen adaptation of short stories by Sergey Dovlatov about young recruits at a military boot camp. He gained popularity thanks to a crime comedy, Mama, Don’t Be Sad (Mama, Ne Gorui) by Maksim Pezhemsky and an edgy family drama, Mother (Mama) by Denis Yevstigneyev. Russian TV viewers came to know him from the first season of a detective series, Kamenskaya. Subsequently, he starred in the tragical farce The Wedding (Svadba) by Pavel Lungin, the sentimental melodrama Mistreating Women Would Not Be Appreciated (Zhenshchin Obizhat Ne Rekomenduyetsya) by Valery Akhadov and the action thriller 24 Hours by Alexander Atanesyan.

In 1999 he was named Honored Artist of Russia. In 2000 he received the National Film Festival Golden Aries prize for best supporting actor in The Wedding. In 2003 he took the best actor prize at the “Window to Europe” National Film Festival in Vyborg for Trio, in which he played a plainclothesman. In 2004 he won a Nika (the Russian equivalent of the Oscar) for Chic by Bakhtier Khudojnazarov. In the retro drama A Driver for Vera (2004) by Pavel Chukhrai, he plays a general’s aide and KGB agent.

A Rider Named Death is Panin’s third collaboration with Karen Shakhnazarov. Prior to that, the actor starred in the mystical thriller Day of the Full Moon (Den polnolunia, 1997) and the black comedy Poisons, or the World History of Poisoning (Yady, ili Vsemirnaya istoriia otravlenii, 2001). To prepare for his role Panin said he had read the entire collected works of Boris Savinkov.

(“I got very tired during shooting”, he said. “The subject matter seemed to suck the life out of me like as a vampire. My character tries to position himself as a rebel god, a demiurge and other such infernal things, and all that took its toll on me as an actor. Since I had already worked with Karen, I caught on to his ideas and suggestions from the slightest hint. I consider myself a fatalist. There are always people in my life who appear and push me to some new limits, and I thankfully follow their advice”).