1920–1989
Mykola Hrynko
Film actor, Papa Carlo in Buratino
What do Papa Carlo from The Adventures of Buratino and the Professor in Stalker have in common? The same actor: Mykola Hrynko from Kherson, of Kyiv’s Dovzhenko Film Studio. He appeared in five films by Andrei Tarkovsky and even played Anton Chekhov.
Key accomplishments
- Five films by Andrei Tarkovsky: Ivan’s Childhood, Andrei Rublev, Solaris, Mirror and Stalker
- Papa Carlo in The Adventures of Buratino (1975)
- Anton Chekhov in A Subject for a Short Story (1970)
- The colonel in Leonid Bykov’s Aty-baty, the Soldiers Were Going
- People’s Artist of the Ukrainian SSR
From the front to the stage
Mykola Hrynko was born in 1920 in Kherson. He went through the Second World War, and afterwards became an actor at the drama theatre in Zaporizhzhia, where he played from 1946 to 1955; he also worked at a theatre in Uzhhorod. Then he moved to Kyiv and spent several years performing on the variety stage.
Five films with Tarkovsky
Hrynko acted in films from 1951, and in 1963 he joined the Oleksandr Dovzhenko Film Studio in Kyiv. He is best known for the films of the director Andrei Tarkovsky. Hrynko appeared in five of them: as Gryaznov in Ivan’s Childhood, the icon painter Daniil Chorny in Andrei Rublev, the hero’s father in Solaris, the head of a printing house in Mirror and the Professor in Stalker.
Chekhov, a colonel and Papa Carlo
In A Subject for a Short Story Hrynko became Anton Chekhov; in Leonid Bykov’s Aty-baty, the Soldiers Were Going he was a colonel, and in Yaroslav the Wise he played Nikon. And for children he became Papa Carlo, who carves Buratino out of a log in The Adventures of Buratino (1975). He was later made a People’s Artist of the Ukrainian SSR.
Mykola Hrynko died in Kyiv in 1989.
Why it matters today
Mykola Hrynko showed how many different people one actor can be: the same man became an icon painter, the Professor in Stalker and kindly Papa Carlo. As an actor of Kyiv’s Dovzhenko Film Studio he appeared in five films by Andrei Tarkovsky, and those are the roles he is best known for. People still love these films, from the fairy tale about a wooden boy to Stalker, so each new generation of viewers discovers the actor from Kherson. His road from the front to the big screen shows how far talent and hard work can take you, wherever you start.
