Russian ballerina.
Born in Moscow on July 27, 1889. Daughter of the theater impresario A.M.Karalli-Tortsov.
In 1906 she graduated from the theater school and went on a foreign tour with Sergei Diaghilev's Russian Ballet. She performed as a soloist at the Bolshoi Theater.
In 1914, Karalli made her film debut in Pyotr Shardynin's drama Do you remember? where her partners were Shardynin himself and Ivan Mozjuukhin. She quickly became one of the first stars of Russian cinema, with eight films to her credit by 1915. The actress mainly appeared in films by Shardynin and another pioneer of Russian cinema, Evgeny Bauer.
After the 1917 revolution, Karalli emigrated, living in Lithuania, where she taught dance in Kaunas, working in Romania, and touring in France and Austria. She eventually settled in Vienna, where she taught ballet. She petitioned to return to her homeland, and on 1 November 1972 she was issued a Soviet passport, but two weeks later she was gone. Vera Karalli died in Baden-Baden on 16 November 1972, at the age of eighty-three.
