Belyaeva was born in
Irkutsk and spent her childhood years in
Nevinnomyssk,
Northern Caucasus, raised with her younger sister by a single mother, who worked at a local construction site. Yankovsky stated later that it was her presence that imparted the film its unique, haunting atmosphere. During the shooting, Belyaeva became romantically involved with Loteanu, who two years later married the 18-year-old actress. In 1979, Belyayeva enrolled into the
Shchukin Theatre Institute in Moscow. After her graduation in 1983, she joined
Mayakovsky Theatre and made her debut there as Vika in
Tomorrow There Was War, after
Boris Vasilyev's novel. While a Shchukin Institute student, Belyaeva appeared in several films. After her performance as Vera Lisichkina in
Ah, Vaudeville, Vaudeville (1979), she was lauded as one of the brightest hopes of the Soviet film industry. In 1983, Loteanu filmed his wife in the biopic
Anna Pavlova, where Belyayeva, playing the great ballerina, had also to perform most of her stage numbers. "We've done a lot of home work. Contacted the Anna Pavlova Society in
London (where she lived in emigration) and received from them invaluable help. For days on end I was studying footages of her stage performances, practiced in
Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Theatre with finest ballet instructors," the actress remembered later. Despite some criticism, from the
Bolshoi Theatre headquarters mostly, the film was met with popular acclaim and confirmed Belyaeva's status as a Soviet film star. Also highly successful were her performances in the lyrical comedy
Her Romantic Hero (1984), film-operetta
Pericola (1984) and
The Black Arrow (1985), after
Robert Louis Stevenson's novel. In the post-
Perestroika years, Belyayeva continued to work in the theatre but mostly ignored the approaches from the film directors. Her most notable role in film in the recent times was that of Valeria, the dance teacher, in Vitaly Tarasenko's
They Danced Just One Winter (2004). == Private life ==