Klara Mikhailovna Rumyanova (; 8 December 1929 – 18 September 2004) was a Soviet and Russian actress, voice actress and singer. She was active from 1951 to 1999.
Her childlike and endearing voice was easily recognized by generations of Soviet people from their early childhood, because she voiced numerous Russian animated films and sang countless children's songs. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union her songs have been heard even more, because of numerous releases of compact discs and tapes of children's songs from cartoons of the Soyuzmultfilm studio. She played roles in several films.
Biography
Klara Rumyanova was born on 8 December 1929 in Leningrad. In 1947, Klara moved to Moscow and on the first attempt she entered VGIK, where she studied at the course of Sergei Gerasimov and Tamara Makarova.
In childhood and adolescence, Klara had a completely different voice, a contralto. The ability to speak with her famous child-like voice she found only in her student years after a serious illness. Klara, like all the students of VGIK, toured with concerts on the Moscow Oblast and once she was very cold and almost died of croupous inflammation of the lungs. After lying in the hospital for more than a month, Klara lost her voice. The continued study at the VGIK was in jeopardy. Sergei Gerasimov showed her to a phoniatrician, but he explained that Klara has very rare vocal cords and he does not guarantee that she will be able to properly practice vocal after recovery. For half a year Gerasimov forbade Rumyanova to talk even in a whisper, and they communicated through writing. When her voice recovered, Rumyanova suddenly discovered that she could now speak in a very high voice, which came to be familiar to millions of moviegoers. In 1953, Klara graduated from VGIK and became an actress of the National Film Actors' Theatre.
As a student she started acting in film, her cinematic debut took place as an episodic role in the film The Village Doctor (1951), by the same Gerasimov. However, in the future Klara played only supporting or episodic roles, never playing the main ones. Her notable roles were in the films The Village Doctor (Lena), Resurrection (Bogodukhovskaya), Time, Forward! (Lushka) and The Twelve Chairs (Katerina Aleksandrovna). Gradually, she was less likely to be offered roles, and she practically stopped filming, which was allegedly caused by a conflict with Ivan Pyryev.
During her last years, Rumyanova was living in a complete loneliness and depression. She stopped going outside, never watched TV and never talked to anyone. She was repeatedly talking to herself: "No mother, no country, no job... What's the meaning of life?" and had thoughts about committing suicide. In 1999, Rumyanova survived through the clinical death. The artist had absolutely no money to buy a medicine or hire a nurse. Her neighbour took care of her.
Rumyanova's health was getting worse each day. She started to lose consciousness more frequently. Four days before her death, she woke up at midnight, fell down unconscious and couldn't get back up, which caused pneumonia. She lay on the floor until morning when her neighbour came in.
She died at the age of 74 on 18 September 2004 in Moscow from breast cancer.