Stanislav Boklan

Greetings, dear readers! Today we are going to delve into the life and work of the outstanding Ukrainian actor Stanislav Volodymyrovych Boklan. He was born on January 12, 1960 in Brusyliv, Zhytomyr region. We invite you to learn more about this extraordinary personality.

BIOGRAPHY OF STANISLAV BOKLAN

Stanislav Volodymyrovych Boklan is a widely known and sought-after theater and film actor whom many Ukrainians consider to be almost a second Bohdan Stupka. He became famous at a fairly mature age, and now he is deservedly reaping the benefits.

In addition to his successful roles in the comedy series Servant of the People, When We’re Home, Fortress, Papik and others, Boklan’s creative track record includes many deeply interesting works in serious theater and film projects. Stanislav Volodymyrovych’s merits and contribution to the development of Ukrainian culture were recognized by the highest title of People’s Artist and other honorary awards.

CHILDHOOD AND TEENAGE YEARS

The future actor was born in the village of Brusyliv, Zhytomyr region, and grew up in a simple working-class family. His father worked at a factory all his life, was a great technician and a jack of all trades. His mother worked as a nanny in a kindergarten, tended to the garden and housekeeping.

At birth, the boy was named Viacheslav, but during registration at the village council, the child was registered as Stanislav. There was also confusion with the date of birth – official documents indicate February 12, while his real date of birth is January 12. That’s why the actor celebrates two birthdays – his real one and his “passport” one. When Stasik was two years old, his parents moved to Kyiv and settled in the Sviatoshynskyi district of the Ukrainian capital. Soon he had a younger brother, Mykola, who also chose the profession of actor. The boys have been very friendly since childhood and now maintain a warm relationship, but their paths in art turned out to be different due to their character and temperament.

Stanislav’s creative abilities were evident at an early age: the boy was good at drawing, modeling with clay, and learned to read early. During his school years, he was involved in various clubs, was fond of sports, and participated in amateur performances. After receiving his secondary school diploma, he did not immediately decide on his future profession and, on the advice of his parents, got a job at the Crystal plant as a micromodule electronic parameter measurer. Perhaps he would have remained a simple worker like his father, but fate decreed otherwise and quite unexpectedly led the young man to the acting environment.

EDUCATION

At the plant, Boklan made a friend who was preparing to enter a theater institute and attended preparatory courses. Out of sheer curiosity, Stanislav went to a couple of classes with him, attended a rehearsal at the theater, and suddenly discovered a completely different world from what he had seen before. He suddenly desperately wanted to escape from his work environment, plunge into the atmosphere of creative search and find himself in a circle of interesting, enthusiastic people who were so different from his yard friends.

The decision to become a certified actor came spontaneously and did not meet with the approval of the young man’s parents. But there was no stopping him, and in 1979, with the same friend, Stanislav took his documents to the Karpenko-Kary Kyiv Institute of Arts. Unfortunately, a miracle did not happen – he received a “D” on his first exam, which left him no chance of becoming a student. The committee members considered him unfit for the job. All of them, except for the teacher of stage speech, who saw hidden potential in the young man and advised him to try again in a year.

Stas listened to her words, enrolled in preparatory courses, performed in pantomimes at the Red Excavator plant, and the following year appeared for the entrance exams again. This time, he successfully passed all the qualifying rounds and was enrolled in the course of Honored Artist of the Ukrainian SSR Borys Stavytskyi. As an adult, Stanislav admitted that if he had the knowledge he had then, he would hardly have gone to the acting department, because “in this profession you have to be either the first or not at all.”

THE BEGINNING OF A CREATIVE CAREER

In 1984, Boklan graduated with honors and was assigned to the Donetsk Regional Drama Theater in Mariupol. He devoted ten years of his life to the theater, which became an excellent professional school and a solid foundation for his future career. During this time, he played many different roles, wrote songs for performances and became one of the leading actors in the theater.

The 1990s had a bad impact on both the cultural sphere and the life of the country as a whole. Actors had to survive on meager salaries, and provincial theaters either closed or were forced to become self-supporting in order to somehow stay afloat. Therefore, as soon as he had the chance, Stanislav returned to Kyiv, where the cultural life was still warm and there were more opportunities for career growth.

He joined the company of the Young Theater, where he has served to this day. The actor has more than two dozen outstanding theatrical works to his credit, including Astrov in Uncle Vanya, Amethyst in Zoya’s Apartment, Claudius in The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, the doctor in Woyzeck, and many others.

ROLES IN THE CINEMA

Since it was almost impossible to feed his family on the salary of a theater actor, Stanislav Boklan began acting in films at the same time. He was lucky – his first job was a role in the multi-part biographical film Taras Shevchenko. Testament (1992-1997) with the incomparable Bohdan Stupka, who played the Kobzar.

This was followed by participation in the joint project American Blues (1994), where our hero had to turn into a member of a gang. Stanislav was paid $500 for ten days of shooting, which was a huge sum at the time. With this money, he bought a “fancy” color TV set so that his family could watch movies with his participation.

The era of TV series has come, and they have flooded the post-Soviet media space. And since Boklan was a versatile actor who could play roles in completely different genres, he began to appear on screens more and more often.

Among the notable works of that period is the role of American journalist Steven Wright in the adventure melodrama Report (1995). On the set, Stanislav met Marina Mogilevskaya, Igor Bochkin and Anatoly Ravikovich – the film turned out to be bright, dynamic and was awarded at the Molodist-95 International Film Festival. Since the early 2000s, Boklan’s filmography has been rapidly expanding with new and interesting works. Among them: Seva Kruglov in the multi-part detective story The Werewolf Trail (2001), General Dubelt in the historical drama Brotherhood (2005), plastic surgeon Ilya in the melodrama Women’s Intuition (2005), revolutionary Antonov-Ovseyenko in the biography of Nestor Makhno, colonel of the tsarist army in the historical series Passion for Chapay (2012), and many others.

It is impossible not to note the actor’s work in the war drama The Match (2011), where he skillfully conveyed the inner drama of a man who rushed to the side of the occupiers and later realized the tragedy of his irreparable mistake.

Particularly noteworthy is the small but full of drama role of NKVD Major Mykhailo Pavlyuchenko, the father of the legendary sniper Lyudmyla Pavlyuchenko, in the large-scale war film The Battle of Sevastopol (2014). The film became one of the last joint film projects between Ukraine and Russia to be shown in Ukrainian cinemas, a vivid demonstration of the strong historical ties between the fraternal peoples who defeated the Nazi invaders in the Great Patriotic War.

In the sitcom When We’re Home, viewers were able to fully appreciate Boklan’s comedic talent. He played the role of a former warrant officer, military pensioner Grigory Bakulin, who constantly finds himself in ridiculous and funny situations.

But the real star hour for the actor was the TV series Servant of the People, where he played Yuriy Ivanovich Chuyko, the fictional Prime Minister of Ukraine. Ukrainian viewers liked the series so much that at some point they began to identify the characters in the movie with their own. Perhaps this helped Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the lead actor, become president in real life, despite attacks from his detractors and accusations of amateurism and unprofessionalism.

PERSONAL LIFE OF STANISLAV BOKLAN

Boklan has been happily married for a long time to actress Natalia Klenina, whom he met on the stage of the Young Theater. Before that, he had already had a brief experience of a failed marriage, which the actor prefers not to talk about. He considers Natalia to be the main woman in his life, who has become his muse, loyal collaborator and mother of his daughter Maria.

Klenina also has a son, Kyrylo, from her first marriage, for whom Stanislav Volodymyrovych has replaced his own father, and calls him his son. Today, Kyrylo Dumskyi is well known in the Kyiv club scene as a fashionable DJ. Maria graduated from the acting department and works as a casting director at Star Media.

Boklan has two grandchildren (Diomede and Arina), in whom he has no hope, and the actor and his wife are avid cat lovers and often pick up destitute animals from the street, saving them from starvation. In his spare time, the actor is engaged in writing, and prefers a secluded leisure time at a country cottage surrounded by his family and numerous furry pets to a pretentious vacation at expensive resorts.

STANISLAV BOKLAN NOW

Stanislav approached his sixtieth birthday with a solid list of theater and film works, the number of which has long exceeded one hundred. After the fantastic success of The Servant of the People, he became one of the most sought-after and highly paid Ukrainian actors and is deservedly basking in the rays of long-awaited fame. Boklan continues to work closely with the creative team of 95 Kvartal, and in 2017 he became one of the jury members of the humorous TV show The League of Laughter.

At the beginning of 2020, a new comedy series Papik produced by Kvartal 95 Studio was released, where Stanislav Volodymyrovych played a beggarly elderly actor who decided to pass himself off as an oligarch in his old age. Daria Petrozhytska was cast in the series alongside him. Prior to that, he successfully starred in the historical multi-episode melodrama Fortress, which gathered a multimillion audience on TV.

Stanislav continues to work actively in theater and film. He also hosts the popular show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”. The recruitment of participants started recently, and the rules of the game and the host remain the same1.

It is important to note that Stanislav Boklan is not only an active actor, but also a volunteer. He helps the military in the rear. He also dedicated a satirical fairy tale to Russian soldiers.

Stanislav Boklan continues to be an important part of Ukrainian culture and art.