Cosmopolitan Beauty (spring 2006)

MAGIC MODEL

The name of Anna Churina is familiar to the readers of glossy magazines and haunters of fashion shows. Yet, for several years already movie fans are watching the first, but more and more assured steps of the young actress with the same name. This is no coincidence, Anna is a student of the All-Russia State Institute of Cinematography now who had successful parts in the TV and movie projects of recent years, such as "Oligarch", "Turetsky March-2", "Dreaming is not Harmful", "Two Lives", "Velvet Revolution". And in a few days we are going to witness the premier show of her new part in cinematographic debut of Vladimir Mirzoyev, a theatre maitre.

- "The Signs of Love" is to be released in a few days, the film where you are playing one of the leading parts. Can you reveal a secret: what kind of magic spectators will see?

- I won't tell you much. The premiere will be on March 2, at the Oktyabr movie theatre. It is a wonderful and unusual story - a… quadrangle of love, and it wasn't a slip of my tongue. As for the genre of the film, it is a comedy with elements of drama, it features many recognizable situations of life many women had to experience. The love triangle of a man plus two women is a vicious circle, forgive me this pun, everybody has been running around for several years unable to break it. And then a fourth personage appears, and the quadrangle is complete.

- It is not magic, it is a geometry of love!

- There will be magic in it too, I assure you: certain forces from the other world interfere with the story. And I'm not going to disclose everything, just a few words. My character is a very unhappy woman, just as her rival, the character of Natasha Shvets, but they attain feminine happiness after all the trouble.

- As far as I know, initially the title of the movie was "The Correction of Life", while now it is "The Signs of Love". Is this metamorphosis justified?

- Yes, quite. "The Correction of Life" would rather refer to Maksim Sukhanov's part. And "The Signs of Love" is a title that must appeal to women's hearts, and it sounds better. But men will surely not be bored by this film. My character is a lover of a married man performed by Aleksey Makarov. My character perceives her situation as a true tragedy, it is a trap for her, a trap she cannot escape from. Then magic comes to help her, and the development of the story is quite unexpected - the viewers will have a big surprise.

- When our parents were young, the tragicomedy of the "Autumn Marathon" could not solve the problem of the love triangle. That movie was sorrowful, rather than funny. And "The Signs of Love" skillfully transforms everything into a crazy phantasmagoria. Maybe time has changed, and we have become more cynical?

- Time has changed, of course, but these triangles have existed, exist, and will exist in future. And it is great that the comic element is more prominent in it because it is easier to solve the problem when you laugh.

- Has Vladimir Mirzoyev retained on screen his brand name manner of presentation characteristic of his stage performances?

- Of course, he did! And it is not just in the visual form of it, it is in the profound understanding of every image. I have my own notion of how my character would react, for instance, yet, after a rehearsal with Vladimir Vladimirovich we suddenly find something unexpected where, say, confusion is manifested in laughter, absolutely hysterical laughter which is not my own, but it is so organic that I understand that I can react like that in such a situation! Add a Mirzoyev brand name visual sequence, the way our stage set was made, what the studio looked like, what was the solution of the spiritualist invocation scene, etc.

- Could this movie provide some concrete recommendations for women whose life put them at the angles of love triangles of that sort which are rarely transformed into quadrangles in reality?

- It is not a universal cure, but you can learn a few things on principle. Personally, I can say that there is no way out of such a situation. I believe women ought to avoid such configurations, but you never know the way life could go.

- What would you say to a person who has not seen Mirzoyev's performances, why should he see this movie?

- I think he should see it just because it features wonderful actors (I don't mean myself). Take, for instance, the effervescent wild humor of Maksim Sukhanov. I just couldn't work with him, it was impossible not to laugh. And there are two more reasons to see this movie - it tells about an original solution of a classical love conflict and makes it in an awfully beautiful way.

- It is quite a predictable question. Yet, what is the magic of love for you?

- I'd rather say that it is unexpected. Love comes, just as that song goes, when you don't expect it at all, as a passing stranger, and then it turns out to be your life. This must be the magic of love, its miracle.

- Have you experienced this magic yourself?

- Yes, yes. But one should understand that there is lust, and there is love that creates and transforms. The latter would really change everything in your life, and for the better. Fortunately, I have experienced it. It is not just words for me. I state with full authority that magic of love exists!

- Do you remember when you felt the spell of beauty for the first time, when you froze in excitement thinking: "How beautiful it is!"?

- It was when I saw "D'Artagnan and Three Musketeers". I was a little girl, and I stared, gaping, at Irina Alfyorova, that's how much I liked her. And I liked Margarita Terekhova's evil Milady too. "I want to look like these women!" - that was my first encounter with the phenomenon of beauty. And, when I looked at my mom, how she made herself up, I liked it very much too, it seemed to be a sort of a sacred act. I stood by her side and, imitating all her gestures, imagined to be making myself up too.

- Do you remember your first experiments with makeup?

- These experiments started when I was 12, maybe even earlier, but they were limited to our apartment: when mom was not at home, I took her huge palette with eyeshadows and painted myself, all my face! And I was fascinated with bright, garish colors - violet, green. When I was a bit older, bright makeup was in vogue (brave quiffs, violet lips), so my appearance was quite to the point. And in Paris, when I went to work there, I learnt how to use makeup in such a way that it is invisible. I don't use any makeup at all now, I give rest to my skin, because I have to wear makeup during shooting sessions.

- Don't you use decorative cosmetics even when you have a romantic supper with your beloved?

- No, I just use correction makeup so that it remained unnoticed. My beloved is a fan of natural beauty, by the way.

- How could one retain the magic of love in her relations with a man for many years to come?

- The main thing for a woman is to keep arousing interest in her man. To achieve it she should be a little mysterious emphasizing that she has an independent life of her own. There is no need to be reticent, one should just be… a woman, sometimes cunning, diplomatic, sometimes talking in riddles. A man is not a girlfriend, you cannot tell him everything, there should be something he doesn't know about you.

- And do you tell everything to your girlfriend? Do you believe in women friendship?

- Yes, there is women friendship. I think, you can relax with your girlfriend, but you can never do it with a man. You should always be tense like a string with him, it makes you ring, and he is never bored with you. Fortunately, I always had luck with my girlfriends. And now I have an intimate friend, a girl who never gave me up when I was in trouble or when I was happy, that is, she was able to help me when I needed and to share my joy, my success when there was reason for it. We are like sisters, so I know what women friendship means from my personal experience! I have pity for women who claim the contrary, who believe that we are all rivals, and, when friends like the same man, they immediately turn into furious tigresses biding their time to go at each other's throats. I want to assure them that there are true friends among girls who appreciate friendship.

- What is your favorite way to while away time with a friend?

- Since my life is very intense, my greatest pleasure is to meet a friend at some cafe and just have a chat. It sometimes happens so that we don't see each other for months, and we try to catch up on everything chatting away for future use.

- Are you bothered by fans during such meetings? How often people recognize you?

- I can't say yet that people really recognize me and it bothers me in any way. Just sometimes a person would come up to me and say, "I know you! We've met, but I don't remember where it was." And I am sure that I don't know this person, just he saw my face and believes that he knows me. So this is the stage of recognition I achieved: people remember my face, but not my occupation.

- I think that this relative quiet will not be long, and you'll find it more difficult to visit public places after "The Signs of Love" - people will remember your name and your face, they'll start to whisper, judging whether you correspond to your status of an actress. No matter how indifferent you are to decorative cosmetics, you have to think of protecting yourself from the negative effect of stress, strenuous work and long use of makeup. What do you use to freshen yourself up?

- I am not unique in it, but sleeping is a universal palliative, yet I have not been able to use its curative effect for a long time recently, although eight hours of sleep is enough for me to look fit. Baths also brace me up, there is this Mirra Lux Russian brand name cosmetics, the stimulating salts of this brand pick me up beautifully.

- Do you often go to beauty saloons?

- It is a must once a week. My profession demands it, and I do it with pleasure. I've been going to mesotherapy, face puncture, not Botox and not Restyline, but herb extracts - arnica and thuja. I like various body wraps a lot. I can't do it often, unfortunately, but I always use it when I take rest. And it is not necessary to go far for it. In autumn, for instance, I stayed in the Crimea, at the sanatorium, for a week, and took a course of sea weed wrap. And fresh air is very important. Whenever I can afford it, I try to go somewhere and just breathe fresh air. This is especially important for Moscow and Muscovites.

- Is it enough for you to visit stage movement class, or are you doing some exercises to keep your muscle tone?

- I go to a gym. I must say that no university for creative professions has a swimming pool here, and I like swimming very much and try to do it regularly.

- What is your attitude to perfume?

- I keep changing perfumes, I don't have any special biases. Since I have good memory for smells, I like to be accompanied with different odors in various periods of my life. Sometimes I would drop into a perfume shop, smell a tester, and my memories overwhelm me, and it is good if the memories are pleasant. So sometimes I avoid certain odors because they arouse not quite pleasant associations. But if you want to know what I liked most, it was the Flower by Kenzo odor from Kenzo and the Gucci Eau de Parfum II.

- According to your interviews, you haven't been sorry to leave your model career which was quite successful when you had an opportunity to fulfill your old dream and become an actress at last. What would you cite as the greatest positive and negative characteristics of these professions?

- The most difficult thing for a professional model is that you are always on the move in space, you have no home, no roots, no assurance of your future. And the most positive thing, paradoxical, as it may seem, it is those "shuttles" all over the world: you travel everywhere, you learn a lot, get to know interesting people, observe the development of fashion, cultivate your taste for clothes, you learn how to behave in most different situations - your outlook expands, generally speaking. As for a professional actress, I cannot say anything bad about it, I adore this profession! The only thing I really don't like in it is long and boring filming of hands and feet close-ups, and waiting for your turn to work on camera. As for the rest, I like it, I am nuts about it. The most positive thing here is that you keep trying other people's lives on, experience strange lives and develop spiritually yourself.

- Can you say that some decisions you made in your life were fateful?

- Sometimes, when time passes, you begin to see these crossings of your life. I met my boyfriend, for instance, on the filming set of a film where I agreed to take part with great reservations. I was offered an episode, and I had rejected jobs of that sort for three years already. I still cannot understand why I broke this law. And I met a man I fell in love with as a result.

- Did you have anything like that in your career?

- I keep praising myself for going to study at the All-Russia State Institute of Cinematography. I had thought about it for quite a long time when Sergey Solovyov invited me to join his course. It was after "Oligarch" and some other parts I played, it looked like I was getting more offers, I was 26 already, and it seemed that it was too late to study. Nevertheless, I agreed, and it gave me professional assurance. Our course is taught by three directors: Solovyov, Rubinchik and… Mirzoyev. That is, if I hadn't entered the Cinematography Institute, there would have been no "Signs of Love" in my life. It is great that everything happened as it happened!

Interviewed by Lilith Gulakyan
Photography: Sergey Artemyev