Actor. A post-World War II star of Soviet stage and screen. He trained as a pianist and singer before joining the Moscow Art Theatre at age 17, quickly moving up from juvenile roles to heroic leads. In 1935, at the start of Josef Stalin's political purges, he was denounced to the secret police on false charges of "counter-revolutionary activities" and sentenced to five years in a prison camp in the Urals. Paroled in 1939, but barred from living within 100 kilometers (62 miles) of major Russian cities, he resumed acting at the Gorky Theatre in Simferopol, Crimea. During the war many Soviet artists were evacuated to safety in Central Asia. Nazvanov's company was sent to Kazakhstan, where film director Sergei Eisenstein was preparing his ambitious "Ivan the Terrible" trilogy; he chose Nazvanov for the vital role of Prince Andrei Kurbsky, the close friend of Czar Ivan who later betrays him. In a rare move, the NKVD expunged Nazvanov's criminal record so he could return to Moscow and continue with the production. "Ivan the Terrible, Part I" (1944) was a major success, but Stalin objected to Part II (1946) and it would not be released until 1958. Part III was scrapped. Luckily this had no negative impact on the actor's career. He went on to win three Stalin Prizes (1948, 1949, 1950) and was named Honored Artist of Russia in 1949. Lean and dashing in the Eisenstein films, Nazvanov soon grew stocky and was more often cast as authority figures, sometimes comic or villainous. From 1950 to 1957 he was a member of the Pushkin Theatre in Moscow. In December 1956 the Soviet Supreme Court exonerated Nazvanov for his "illegal repression" in the 1930s, and the following year he triumphantly returned to the Moscow Art Theatre. After 1960 he was employed at the Mosfilm studio. His last role was as Claudius in Grigori Kozintsev's internationally acclaimed film version of "Hamlet" (1964). He died of a heart attack at 50. Nazvanov's 30 screen credits also include "Wait for Me" (1943), "The Battle of Stalingrad" (1949), "Meeting on the Elbe" (1949), "Unforgettable 1919" (1950), "The Composer Glinka" (1952), "Swedish Match" (1954), "The Hostess" (also directed, 1956), "The Gutta-Percha Boy" (1957), "The Duel" (1957), and "My Younger Brother Andrey" (1962). He was married to actress Olga Viklandt.