Godunov was born in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, in the Russian Far East. Godunov began his ballet studies at the age of nine in Riga in 1958, in the same class as Mikhail Baryshnikov. He remarked his mother put him in ballet to prevent him from becoming "a hooligan". The two became friends and helped each other throughout their years there. Godunov joined the Bolshoi Ballet in 1971 and rose to become Premier danseur. His teachers there included Aleksey Yermolayev. In 1973, he won a gold medal at the MoscowInternational Ballet Competition. After playing Vronsky in 1976's Anna Karenina and Lemisson, the Royal minstrel, in the 1978 film version of J. B. Priestley's 31 June, Godunov became well known in the Soviet Union as a movie actor.
On August 21, 1979, while on a tour with the Bolshoi Ballet in New York City, Godunov contacted authorities and asked for political asylum. After discovering his absence, the KGB responded by putting his wife, Lyudmila Vlasova, a soloist with the company, on a plane to Moscow, but the flight was stopped before takeoff. After three days, with involvement by President Jimmy Carter and Soviet leaderLeonid Brezhnev, the U.S. State Department was satisfied that Vlasova had chosen to return to the Soviet Union of her own free will, and allowed the plane to depart. This incident was dramatized in a 1986 movie, Flight 222. Vlasova later said that while Godunov loved American culture and had long desired to live in the United States, she felt she was "too Russian" to live in the United States. The couple divorced in 1982.
Later career
Godunov joined the American Ballet Theatre and danced as a principal dancer until 1982, when he had a falling-out with Mikhail Baryshnikov, the director of the company. A press release for the AmericanBallet Theatre stated a change in the troupe's repertoire did not provide him with sufficient roles. Following his release Godunov traveled with his own troupe, and danced as a guest artistaround the world with a number of prominent ballet troupes. He also began working in Hollywood as a film actor. Godunov's acting roles were varied, including an Amish farmer in Witness, a comically narcissistic symphony conductor in The Money Pit, and a violent German terrorist in Die Hard. He passed on roles which typecast him as a dancer or another heavy as in Die Hard.
Personal life
Godunov married Lyudmila Vlasova, a soloist with the Bolshoi Ballet, in 1971. The couple had no children. The two divorced in 1982. In 1981, Godunov met actress Jacqueline Bisset at a party in New York City. Six months later, the two began a relationship that lasted seven years. Godunov became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1987.
Death
Godunov drank alcohol to excess, and this became a problem as he got older. On May 18, 1995, Godunov's friends became concerned when he had been uncharacteristically quiet with his phone calls. A nurse who had not heard from him since May 8 went to his home in the Shoreham Towers, West Hollywood, California, where his body was discovered. Godunov's death was determined to be due to complications from hepatitis secondary to chronic alcoholism. Following his death Godunov's ashes were scattered into the Pacific Ocean. A memorial to him at Gates Mortuary in Los Angeles is engraved with the epitaph "His future remained in the past."
