Alexander Lazarev was born in Leningrad, to the artist and designer Sergey Nikolayevich Lazarev and Olympiada Kuzminichna Lazareva. The family survived the first month of the Siege, then managed to get out of the city and make it to Orenburg. In 1944 they returned home and the next year Alexander went to school. By the time of graduation he's made a decision to become an actor, citing later Robert Taylor's performance in Waterloo Bridge as the major influence. In 1955 Lazarev joined the Young actors' studio at the Moscow Art Theater. After a short stint at the Nikolay Akimov-led Saint Petersburg Comedy Theatre, he moved to Mayakovsky Theater, led at the time by Nikolay Okhlopkov where the part of Boytsov the electrician in Aleksei Arbuzov's The Irkutsk Story was his first success. In 1961 Lazarev debuted in film, in thriller melodrama Free Wind, based on Isaak Dunayevsky's operetta of the same name. Among his other notable theatre roles of the 1960s were the sailor anarchist Gushcha in Between the Rainfalls, uber-lieutenant Schering in The Defector and Varavvin in Pyotr Fomenko-directed The Death of Tarelkin. The leading part of physicist Yevdokimov in Georgy Natanson's 1968 film One More Thing About Love brought Lazarev nationwide acclaim. The director Andrey Goncharov's arrival as Mayakovsky Theater marked the second phase of Alexander Lazarev's successful career there. First his performance as Don Quixote in A Man of La Mancha was lauded by critics, then the leading part in Venceremos!, after Genrikh Borovik's play, earned him the USSR State Prize. Among Lazarev's other important stage works of the period were General Khludov, Rittmeister in The Life of Klim Samgin, and Vladimir Mayakovsky in Mark Rozovsky's The Beginnings. In A Crayfish Laughs, Lazarev managed at last to realize his comedy actor potential to the full. Then followed Circle, A Patron's Joke and Victim of Our Age, the latter earning Lazarev the Moscow Prize for Literature and Arts. He received another prestigious award, Chrystal Turandot, for the leading part of Edmund Kean in Kean the Fourth, Tatyana Akhramkova's production of Grigory Gorin's play. Lazarev continued to appear in films throughout the 2000s but none of those were particularly successful. "In theater he was continuously demonstrating his brilliance, his versatility, his comedy actor's potential. In cinema? Silence. Not one of our famous film directors has ever invited him to play a more or less substantial part. 'What we have we neglect, once we lose it – mourn it'," author and critic Edward Radzinsky, speaking on the Russian TV commented in 2011. Alexander Lazarev died in Abramtsevo, Moscow Oblast, on May 2, 2011. He is interred in Troyekurovskoye Cemetery in Moscow.
Family
On March 27, 1960, Alexander Lazarev married a fellow Mayakovsky Theater actress Svetlana Nemolyaeva. They lived happily with for 51 years, until his death. Their son :ru:Лазарев, Александр Александрович|Aleksander Lazarev Jr., is a Lencom actor, the People's Artist of Russia and the State Prize laureate. Alexander Lazarev's younger brother :ru:Лазарев, Юрий Сергеевич|Yuri, a Saint Petersburg Comedy Theatre actor, has been honoured with the Meritorious Artist and the People's Artist of Russia titles.
Selected filmography
1961 — Free Wind as Yango
1964 — Taking Fire Upon Ourselves as Fyodor, partisan unit commander
1966 — On a Wild Shore as Sakko
1967 — In the Beautiful Furious World
1967 — Revenge as German doctor
1968 — Portrait of Dorian Gray as Basil
1968 — One Thing More About Love as Yevdokimov, physicist
1968 — Knight of Dream as clairvoyant musician
1969 — Late Flowers as doctor Toporkov
1971 — Deadly Enemy as Yaschurov
1971 — Talents and Followers as Meluzov
1971 — Blackened Crumpets
1971 — What to Do?
1972 — In Answer for Everything as Mashkov, physicist
