Born in Rostov-on-Don (modern-day
Rostov Oblast of
Russia) as Rostislav Ivanovich Plyat, the future actor was so obsessed with theatre that he decided to "correct" his name at the passport office to make it more euphonious and memorable. His father, Ivan Iosifovich Plyat, was a lawyer of
Polish descent, "although a very
russified one". His
Ukrainian mother Zinaida Pavlovna Zakamennaya came from
Poltava and died eight years later from
tuberculosis. Ivan Plyat then moved to Moscow where he married Anna Nikolaevna Volikovskaya who raised Rostislav as her own son. He was baptized in
Russian Orthodoxy and only spoke the Russian language. Plyatt studied in the Moscow secondary school where he visited drama classes led by a popular
Maly Theatre actor Vladimir Lebedev, and then by
Moscow Art Theatre actress Varvara Sokolova-Zalesskaya who introduced him to the basics of the
Stanislavski's system. After that he decided to become a professional actor and in 1926 unsuccessfully tried to join the Moscow Art Theatre troupe. He then entered the Theatre-Studio led by
Yuri Zavadsky where he spent the next 11 years, performing in mostly comedy roles, although with years he established himself as a serious drama actor. Among his lifetime roles was
George Bernard Shaw, whom he portrayed in 1933 in ''
The Devil's Disciple and then reprised in 1963 in both Caesar and Cleopatra'' (where he also played Caesar) and
Jerome Kilty's
Dear Liar: A Comedy of Letters. From 1938 to 1943 Plyatt served at the
Lenkom Theatre. Since 1939 he also started appearing in movies. His very first role of a goofy bachelor from the family comedy
The Foundling gained him fame and became one of his most memorable performances. During the
Great Patriotic War, Plyatt stayed in the
sieged Moscow, gave theatre performances and worked as a radio host, regularly crossing the city during heavy bombings. In 1943 he moved to the
Mossovet Theatre where he had served for the rest of his life. He was known for his long-lasting friendship with
Faina Ranevskaya, and they regularly performed together in both plays and movies. They appeared in two leading roles in the popular
The Rest Is Silence play, the Mossovet stage adaptation of
Make Way for Tomorrow where Ranevskaya performed till the end of her career; Plyatt's Barkley Cooper is universally praised as the peak of his acting skills. Among Plyatt's famous movie roles were Bubentsov in
Grigori Aleksandrov's
Springtime (1947), Petukhov in
A Groom from the Other World (1958) and landlord in
Strictly Business (1962), both by
Leonid Gaidai, Dankevich in
Sergey Mikaelyan's
Going Inside a Storm (1965) and pastor Schlag in
Tatyana Lioznova's
Seventeen Moments of Spring miniseries (1973). He also worked a lot as a voice actor, narrating films and cartoons, dubbing foreign movies and performing in radio plays. Among those was the popular post-war children's radio play
The Club of Famous Captains where he performed for 40 years straight. Rostislav Plyatt died on 30 June 1989 and was buried at the
Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow. Plyatt was married twice. His first wife Nina Vladimirovna Butova also performed at the
Mossovet Theatre. After her death in 1978, he married Ludmila Semyonovna Maratova, an educator at
GITIS and announcer at the
All Union First Programme. Plyatt left no children. ==Selected filmography==