Konstantin Khabensky

Konstantin Khabensky was born in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) to Yuri Aronovich Khabensky and Tatiana Gennadievna Khabenskaya (née Nikulina). Both of his parents were engineers, his mother also worked as a mathematics teacher.[6] He has an older sister, Natalia Khabenskaya.[7][8]

In 1981, he together with his family moved to Nizhnevartovsk, where Konstantin lived over the period of four years. In 1985 the family returned to Leningrad. After finishing eight classes of secondary school No. 486, Konstantin entered the Technical College of Aviation Instrument Engineering and Automation, but after studying there for three years he realized that this profession was not for him. He tried many jobs including as a janitor, cleaner, street musician, and then was hired as a lighting technician at the theatre studio "Subbota" where he later performed for the first time. In 1990 Khabensky entered the Leningrad State Institute of Theatre, Music and Cinema (course of Veniamin Filshtinsky), where his classmates were Mikhail Porechenkov, Andrei Zibrov and Mikhail Trukhin. For the final exam Konstantin performed as Estragon in the play Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, his graduation was in 1995.

Early roles (1994–2003)

Khabensky's cinematic debut was in the 1994 comedy film To whom will God send where he appeared in a minor role of a pedestrian.

In 1995, after graduating from the Russian State Institute of Performing Arts, Konstantin worked at the Perekriostok Experimental Theater where he served for one year. At the same time he acted in the Lensoviet Theatre in Saint Petersburg.

Konstantin Khabensky moved to Moscow in 1996 to become a stage actor in Satyricon Theatre where he performed in backgraund roles. He worked there for only a few months and returned to the Saint Petersburg Lensoviet Theatre.

Between 1995 and 1996, he worked as presenter of regional TV in the department of music and information programs.

In 1998, he acted in three pictures at once. In the satiric romantic drama directed by Dmitry Meskhiev, Women's Property, Khabensky played the lead role of Andrei Kalinin, a young aspiring actor who decides to seduce the aging actress and professor of a teaching institute Elizaveta Kaminskaya, played by Yelena Safonova. For the role he received the Best Male Actor award at the Gatchina Literature and Cinema Film Festival. Khabensky also starred in the Russian-Hungarian criminal fantasy melodrama of Tomas Toth Natasha and had an uncredited role of a musician in the social drama of Aleksei German, Khrustalyov, My Car!.

The actor said that he got his first roles by chance. The role in Natasha went to the actor after a meeting with the Hungarian director Tomas Toth. "We talked, recalls Konstantin, he asked: "Will you act?" - I said: "I will!" Then we drank vodka. And so began work in the cinema." He was cast in the picture Women's Property in a similar way. The actor recalls: "I go downstairs to the studio, some man rises up, comes across and looks at me: "Somehow I do not know you!" - I answer: "I do not know you either!" - and we parted. And then people came up to me and said that it was director Dima Meskhiev and that I was approved for the role in his new film Women's Property.

The following year, Konstantin played a small role in Nikolai Lebedev's thriller The Admirer (1999). The next notable work in the cinema was the main role in the drama of Vladimir Fokin's House for the Rich (2000). Next year he played in another film by Dmitry Meskhiev, comedy-drama Mechanical Suite.

Khabensky received wide recognition among Russian television viewers after he was cast as investigator Igor Plakhov in the crime procedural comedy-drama series Deadly Force (2000-2005).

Another important role was of Sasha Guriev in the picture In Motion (2002), directorial debut of Filipp Yankovsky. The film was about a successful and charming journalist who suddenly realizes that he has found compromising evidence on his politician friend. For the role he received the Best Male Actor award at the Vivat, Russian Cinema festival.

In 2003 he played musician Kostya, similar in looks to John Lennon, in the television series Lines of Fate directed by Dmitry Meskhiev. In the same year, he had the supporting role of journalist Gosha in comedy Peculiarities of National Politics, also by the aforementioned director.

Since 2003, Khabensky has been a member of Moscow Art Theatre stage cast, and a lead actor in Alexander Vampilov's Duck Hunting (Zilov), Mikhail Bulgakov's The White Guard (Alexey Turbin) and Hamlet (Claudius).