Kholodnya, Vera (1893–1919)
Kholodnya, Vera (1893–1919)
Russian actress. Name variations: Kholodnaya; Kholodnaia. Born in Russia in 1893; died in Odessa, Russia, in 1919; married a military officer.
Selected films:
Song of Triumphant Love (1915); Thief (1916); A Life for a Life (1916); The Woman Who Invented Love (1918); A Living Corpse (1918).
Vera Kholodnya was one of Russia's most popular pre-revolutionary film actresses, although her career was cut short by her untimely death at the age of 26. The wife of a military officer, Kholodnya was employed as an extra at Moscow's Alexander Khanzhonkov film studio in the spring of 1915. A stand-out with dyed black hair, bottle-green eyes, and pale skin (accentuated with dead white make-up), she caught the attention of director Yevgeni Bauer, who gave her the leading role in the film Song of Triumphant Love (1915), which established her as a star. In 1918, Kholodnya moved to Odessa, where many of the studios had relocated during the Civil War that followed the Russian Revolution. Not long after her arrival, she succumbed to a fatal attack of influenza, a war-born epidemic which took the lives of many of the city's inhabitants.