Lyubov Orlova was born in Zvenigorod on February 11, 1902. Her father Pyotr Orlov was a civil servant, a great fan of card games, her mother Yevgenia Sukhotina, of noble origin, was distantly related to the family of Leo Tolstoy. From a very young age Orlova was engaged in music. There is a legend that the great singer Fyodor Chaliapin, after seeing her perform in a children's play, predicted a great future for her as an actress. In 1919, Lyubov Orlova entered the Moscow Conservatory in the piano class. In 1922 she began to study choreography at a drama school.
Lyubov Orlova began her theatrical career in 1926, when she entered the troupe of the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theatre. V. Nemirovich-Danchenko, a great lover of female beauty, offered her small roles in musicals, she also starred in two silent films.
A brunette by birth, bleached to platinum blonde, Orlova got the main role in the film Merry Boys (1934), which made her a star in the Soviet Union. Thus, what was very important for her career, Orlova became Stalin's favorite actress. It was often noted, that in her physical appearance Lyubov Orlova copied the German Marlene Dietrich, taking advantage of the fact, that at that time Dietrich was completely unknown in the Soviet Union. The two women knew each other, but Orlova was always very hostile to any comparisons.
Caring for her popularity, Orlova always showed the greatest discipline in her work. It was said that every gesture she made on screen, facial expression or eyebrow twitch had been studied and rehearsed.
In most of her films, especially her greatest successes such as The Circus, The Shining Way, Volga-Volga and Spring, Orlova acted under the direction of her husband Grigory Alexandrov (Григорий Александров), a former student of Sergei Eisenstein (Сергей Эйзенштейн). Stalin was very fond of Orlova and even during a dinner he threatened Alexandrov with execution if he harmed the actress. Orlova was awarded the Stalin Prize in 1941 for her two films The Circus and Volga - Volga
The Orlova-Alexandrov couple led a star lifestyle with many awards and trips until Stalin's death.
Growing up in poverty, Orlova remained for a long time an icon of style and fashion, capable of going to Paris to buy a pair of gloves. On this subject in the film world there were many remarks, including one by Faina Ranevskaya: A moth could never damage Liouba's (Orlova) clothes, simply because it would never find a place in her wardrobe!
The film The Meeting on the Elbe was the last great success in the acting career of Lyubov Orlova. Alexandrov's two films of the 60s and 70s, Russian Souvenir and The Starling and the Lyre, were very poorly received by critics, the latter was withdrawn from theaters at Orlova's request. Throughout her life the actress made great efforts to maintain her physical shape and beauty, but with age and not being a great theater actress, she began to have difficulty getting important roles at the Mossovet Theater (Театр имени Моссовета), where she had been performing since 1955. She died of cancer in 1975. In 1983 Grigory Alexandrov shot a documentary film in her honor, Lyubov Orlova.
