Konstantin Khabensky

Konstantin Yurievich Khabensky, PAR (Константин Юрьевич Хабенский; born 11 January 1972) is a Russian actor of stage and film, director and philanthropist.

In 1981, he together with his family moved to Nizhnevartovsk, where Konstantin lived over the period of four years.

In 1985 the family returned to Leningrad.

After finishing eight classes of secondary school No. 486, Konstantin entered the Technical College of Aviation Instrument Engineering and Automation, but after studying there for three years he realized that this profession was not for him.

He tried many jobs including as a janitor, cleaner, street musician, and then was hired as a lighting technician at the theatre studio "Subbota" where he later performed for the first time.

In 1990 Khabensky entered the Leningrad State Institute of Theatre, Music and Cinema (course of Veniamin Filshtinsky), where his classmates were Mikhail Porechenkov, Andrei Zibrov and Mikhail Trukhin.

Khabensky's cinematic debut was in the 1994 comedy film To whom will God send where he appeared in a minor role of a pedestrian.

For the final exam Konstantin performed as Estragon in the play Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, his graduation was in 1995.

In 1995, after graduating from the Russian State Institute of Performing Arts, Konstantin worked at the Perekriostok Experimental Theater where he served for one year.

At the same time he acted in the Lensoviet Theatre in Saint Petersburg.

Between 1995 and 1996, he worked as presenter of regional TV in the department of music and information programs.

Konstantin Khabensky moved to Moscow in 1996 to become a stage actor in Satyricon Theatre where he performed in background roles.

He worked there for only a few months and returned to the Saint Petersburg Lensoviet Theatre.

From 1997 he was part of the Saint Petersburg Lensoviet Theatre cast until 2000, after which he transferred to the Moscow Art Theatre in 2002 where he is still active.

In 1998, he acted in three pictures at once.

In the satiric romantic drama directed by Dmitry Meskhiev, Women's Property, Khabensky played the lead role of Andrei Kalinin, a young aspiring actor who decides to seduce the aging actress and professor of a teaching institute Elizaveta Kaminskaya, played by Yelena Safonova.

For the role he received the Best Male Actor award at the Gatchina Literature and Cinema Film Festival.

Khabensky also starred in the Russian-Hungarian criminal fantasy melodrama of Tomas Toth Natasha and had an uncredited role of a musician in the social drama of Aleksei German, Khrustalyov, My Car!.

The actor said that he got his first roles by chance.

The role in Natasha went to the actor after a meeting with the Hungarian director Tomas Toth.

"We talked, recalls Konstantin, he asked: "Will you act?" - I said: "I will!" Then we drank vodka. And so began work in the cinema."

He was cast in the picture Women's Property in a similar way.

The actor recalls: "I go downstairs to the studio, some man rises up, comes across and looks at me: "Somehow I do not know you!" - I answer: "I do not know you either!" - and we parted. And then people came up to me and said that it was director Dima Meskhiev and that I was approved for the role in his new film Women's Property.

Khabensky's first lead roles in cinema were in Women's Property (1999) and in the film In Motion (2002).

The following year, Konstantin played a small role in Nikolai Lebedev's thriller The Admirer (1999).

The next notable work in the cinema was the main role in the drama of Vladimir Fokin's House for the Rich (2000).

Next year he played in another film by Dmitry Meskhiev, comedy-drama Mechanical Suite.

Khabensky received wide recognition among Russian television viewers after he was cast as investigator Igor Plakhov in the crime procedural comedy-drama series Deadly Force (2000-2005).

Among the Russian audience he gained recognition with the TV series Deadly Force (2002-2005), while his international breakthrough came with the films Night Watch (2004) and Day Watch (2006) as the protagonist, Anton Gorodetsky.

Another important role was of Sasha Guriev in the picture In Motion (2002), directorial debut of Filipp Yankovsky.

The film was about a successful and charming journalist who suddenly realizes that he has found compromising evidence on his politician friend.

Other notable films with him in the lead role include Poor Relatives (2005), The Irony of Fate 2 (2007), Collector (2016), TV series Pyotr Leschenko. Everything That Was... (2013), The Method (2015) and Trotsky (2017).

One of the most acclaimed actors in Russia, Khabensky has earned numerous awards, including two Nika Awards for The Admiral (2008) and The Geographer Drank His Globe Away (2013).

He has also won three Golden Eagle Awards for Best Actor, three Kinotavr Awards and the Russian Guild of Film Critics Award.

Alongside his work in cinema, Khabensky is a philanthropist, in 2008 he established the Konstantin Khabensky Charitable Foundation which provides assistance to children with oncological and other serious brain afflictions.

Was born in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) to Yuri Aronovich Khabensky and Tatiana Gennadievna Khabenskaya (née Nikulina).

Both of his parents were engineers, his mother also worked as a mathematics teacher.

He has an older sister, Natalia Khabenskaya.

Based on the data of the website KinoPoisk, Konstantin Khabensky was declared to be the most popular actor in Russia in the first 15 years of the 21st century.

Khabensky made his directorial debut in 2018 with the Holocaust drama Sobibor where he also played the role of Alexander Pechersky.