The bell rang through the dream. Half asleep, not understanding who could appear at such an early hour, Margarita Terekhova went to the door.
“I open it - and suddenly a shadow, like a ghost, something gray, without a face, passes by me,” the actress recalls that terrible night when she faced an otherworldly force. - I in wild horror jump out onto the landing. There I come to my senses and see that I am already ringing at my own door. There is no key. There was nobody in the apartment.
I called my old neighbors in the hope that they would allow me to move to my room on the balcony. It happened before: you go out for a minute, the door will slam, and the keys will remain in the apartment. But the neighbors never let me in. And then at 4:15 in the morning they were allowed!.. I don't remember how I walked along the balcony railing. I went to bed and fell asleep … I woke up - I remember everything that happened. I remember the ghost too. I called a friend who is interested in mysticism. And she says to me: "Wait for the news now" …
Played wife and mother
In the evening, the actress received a call and was told that the mother of director Andrei Tarkovsky had died. Why did the ghost come to Magarita? What was this mystical sign?
Andrei Tarkovsky idolized his mother and decided to make a film about his relationship with her. He invited Margarita Terekhova to play the main role. She played both the mother and the wife of the main character in The Mirror.
“I got this role, probably because I was like Maria Ivanovna in my youth. And facial features and hair, - suggests Terekhova. "She also had very thick long hair …"
Promotional video:
The star talked to Tarkovsky's mother on the set. Asking the woman about everything, the actress tried to embody this image on the screen as authentically as possible. Tarkovsky shot a picture about the impossibility of coming to terms with the fact that my mother would one day die. And Margarita got so used to her image that the director … fell in love with her.
“It's good that it happened by the end of filming,” admitted Tarkovsky. - Otherwise the film might not have been.
Margarita also fell in love with the director, but …
- He did not call me to marry. Moreover, he was not free … - Terekhova explains.
He will come to you …
The novel did not work out. But they loved each other. And the director's mother felt it. Therefore, after her death I came to Terekhova, who played her so believably in the film.
“It turns out that she suffered greatly, dying of cancer,” writes Margarita Terekhova in her book “From the First Mouth…”.
- And I didn't even know that Maria Ivanovna was ill. Just as I didn’t realize that my acting in The Mirror is life. So understand where life is, where is the theater … Saying goodbye to Maria Ivanovna forever, I could not leave the cemetery. And it became easier for me only when I said: "He will come to you," meaning the living Andrei, they say, he will visit the grave. The real, terrible meaning of these words reached me when I learned about Tarkovsky's illness. He died seven years later from cancer, like his mother … Then Andrei dreamed of me, joyful: I stroked his face, his beautiful hair, and he smiled brightly …"