Elena Podkaminskaya

Elena Podkaminskaya is a Russian theater and film actress, known for the comedy “What Men Talk About” and the TV series “Kitchen”.

Elena Podkaminskaya was born on April 10, 1979 in Moscow into a family of musicians. According to the actress, her childhood was a continuous festive performance. “From a young age, my mother instilled in me such a problem as hatred of routine and boredom, from which I still suffer.
In our family, it was believed that every holiday should be an extravaganza. We wrote scripts, staged performances with changing clothes and changing images. Every birthday, in addition to gifts, I thought over a new dress and had to appear in a special way before the public. I was met in an original way, with adventures, according to a developed scenario. It was a manifestation of the culture of our family: to give the child joy and love through something beautifully created and encouraging to experience strong and vivid emotions, ”recalls Podkaminskaya.

Parents tried to give their daughter the opportunity to express themselves in different creative spheres – Lena painted, and danced, and studied at a music school. After school, she, of course, chose the profession of an actress and on the first attempt entered the Shchukin Theater School for the course of Alexander Shirvindt. For the first time, the girl made her debut on stage, playing Kay in the production of Priestley’s play “Conway’s Time and Family” at the Satire Theater. The scene of the “temple of arts” was easy for her – with each role Elena Podkaminskaya became stronger and stronger as a theater actress. She made her film debut immediately after graduating from a theatrical high school – at 22 she starred in the episodic role of Ursula Born in the crime comedy Sergei Ursulyak Poirot’s Failure (2002). This was followed by minor roles in the films “Joker” (2002), the series “Code of Honor” (2002), “Silver Lilies of the Valley 2” (2004) and others.
Most of the time, Elena worked at the Satire Theater, where she got the main roles and positive reviews from critics who considered Elena a good dramatic actress. But in the cinema, Podkaminskaya knew how to surprise and show herself from different sides – both as a dramatic and as a comedic actress. For example, in Alexei Muradov’s comedy Night Sisters (2007), which tells the story of a businessman-patient who, out of boredom and impudence, seduces nurses in an ordinary Russian hospital, Elena Podkaminskaya played the role of Marina’s nurse.
For the sake of this work, the actress was not afraid to act in explicit erotic scenes. From the age of 28, Elena began to receive the main roles on the screen. She played Elena Bakova in the series “Protection from” (2007), a married dreamer in the comedy “A few simple desires” (2007), Nina Zataeva in the series “Petrovka 38”, “Semenov’s Team” (2008), Agafya Ivanovna in the mini-series The Brothers Karamazov (2009), an actress of the front-line propaganda brigade, who found her first love right on the front line in the military drama Towards War (2009).

But the actress did not refuse small roles – for example, in 2008, Elena managed to get a small role in the blockbuster Fyodor Bondarchuk’s “Inhabited Island” (2008) – the Wanderer’s secretary. Her first popularity came with comedies in the films of the theatrical Quartet I – What Men Talk About (2010) and What Men Talk About (2011).
In these popular comedies, Elena plays the wife of the main character – Alexei Barats. Both successful films were directed by Dmitry Dyachenko – acquaintance with him became a landmark for the actress, because it was Dmitry who invited her to the casting in the series “Kitchen” (since 2012), which made the actress popular throughout the country. … Podkaminskaya was approved for the role of the bitchy art director of a fashionable restaurant – Victoria Goncharova, who catapulted Elena to the pinnacle of fame. 34-year-old screen star Elena Podkaminskaya is married and has a two-year-old daughter, Polina.