Stars From gigolo to leader: unusual roles of Konstantin Khabensky

If you don’t know, it’s hard to believe: in the animated series Timon and Pumbaa, one of the main characters speaks with the voice of Khabensky! Timon the mongoose jokes, making fun of his friend, the warty pig Pumbaa; he is boastful, cunning and constantly involved in dangerous adventures. And he’s not against indulging in bugs at someone else’s expense.
You can hear Timon-Khabensky in episodes 1 – 40 of the first season of the animated series.

Infantile, indecisive, but endlessly romantic handsome Andrey – this is how Khabensky appeared before the audience in the drama of Dmitry Meskhiev. The director himself never considered the film “Property of Women” to be particularly successful. But for Konstantin this role turned out to be significant. It can be said that it was with “Property of Women” that his status as a future sex symbol began to take shape. After all, not only the heroines of “Properties of Women” were pleased with the applicant Andrey Kalinin. Even the ladies’ man, who turned out to be a truly loving man, plunged into the soul and the audience.
Unfortunately, the role of Kalinin turned out to be somewhat prophetic for the actor. In the picture, his hero buried his beloved wife who died of cancer, and Khabensky also suffered a heavy loss in his life: his first wife Anastasia died of cancer. Otherwise, Konstantin did not repeat the fate of Andrey Kalinin in any way – the actor was never a splurge-alphonso and did not try to “advance” with the help of women.

In the Russian animated film Urfin Deuce and His Wooden Soldiers, an adaptation of A. Volkov’s fairy tale of the same name, Khabensky voiced the main antagonist. He was given the role of the carpenter Urfin, a sullen and unsociable man, but cunning and obsessed with power. (Interestingly, Deuce’s main henchman – a soldier general with a douche bag – was voiced by none other than Sergey Shnurov).
“This is not my first time voicing cartoons and I enjoy it. Especially if the role is small. If it’s big, it’s quite laborious,” the artist admitted at the time. In his opinion, Urfin Deuce is a somewhat ridiculous character who only tries to be a monster, but is actually an unhappy and lonely person.
For this work, Khabensky was nominated for the IV. national award for animation “Icarus”.

Who hasn’t heard that Khabensky once played with Bekmambetov with Angelina Jolie herself (and James McAvoy – but that’s beside the point)? … The episodic role of a Russian assassin helping the main character is widely known, but still atypical for Konstantin Yurievich.
Perhaps because the character turned out to be rather grotesque. What are just his remarks (“Is it vodka?” “Yes”, “Are you Russian?”, “Ah!”), or strange behavior (running after the national drink, Khabensky “Fighter” sang the song “Tired toys” asleep”) .
There was a lot of buzz surrounding the scene in which the Russian actor is allegedly kissed by Angelina Jolie. Khabensky himself was confused: after all, her heroine Fox simply performed artificial respiration of the bomber, and there was no kiss! “Here is the Scottish actor James McAvoy, who played the main role there, really kissed Angelina,” the artist clarified in various interviews.

In Dmitry Meskhiev’s black comedy, which fully reflects the atmosphere of the beginning of the 20th century, Khabensky played a special role – an intelligent and quiet … crook Edik. It is his character who carries a million rubles in a diplomatic car for the mafia (which then disappears) and it is he who throws the corpse of a neighbor in a compartment out of the window. In general, if you want to see the current national idol in a rather repulsive image, the tragicomic detective Meskhiev will help you.

In the historical drama of the Russian-French production, he got the role of Aron Simanovich, Rasputin’s personal secretary. (Grigory Efimovich himself, as we remember, was played by Gerard Depardieu).
Khabensky embodied on the screen a somewhat controversial historical figure: a merchant and usurer, the owner of gambling houses, Simanovich was also a memoirist. But historians question the authenticity of his memoirs. For example, the scientist GZ Ioffe called Simanovich a “scoundrel”, and the columnist SV Fomin called the memories he left about Rasputin “through and through false”.
Viewers were also not thrilled with Simanovic on screen. But according to the reviews, “the actor who played him is not to blame”, but the creators of the tape themselves. The character has not been revealed. “I did not understand at all what Khabensky was doing in the film and why his hero is needed,” says a typical review.

The personality of one of the leaders of the Russian revolution did not attract the actor. Konstantin himself spoke about this, admitting at the same time that “he is a significant figure of the last century.” The miniseries by Alexander Kotto and Konstantin Statsky therefore demonstrates a non-standard, highly subjective view of this character.
Khabensky played Trotsky at different ages: very young and already older. According to him, it was not difficult to transform into a 60-year-old immigrant with the help of makeup. It is much more difficult to appear in the guise of a young revolutionary, “trying to exist in a state of youthful maximalism.” However, the artist successfully solved this problem by embodying Trotsky in different forms: a young man with the look of a wolf cub and a big, dangerous politician with hellish charisma.

One of the first roles of Konstantin – Ferenc in the Hungarian-Russian film “Natasha” (Natasha). In the little-known film, the LGITMiK graduate played a Hungarian student who starts a romance with a Moscow girl Natasha and at the same time finds a friend in her brother Sergey. The Hungarian gradually suspects that the guy and the girl are more like lovers, and besides, they perform strange shamanic rites…
Still quite young and inexperienced, Khabensky was able to show his talent in this artistic detective story. Even then, critics and viewers estimated strong potential in the performer of the role of Ferenc.

Unfortunately, the scenes with Khabensky were never included in the final version of the horror film World War Z – by the way, the highest-grossing film of Brad Pitt’s career. However, our compatriot did his job and period. He played (and no doubt brilliantly) a Russian fighter helping Pitt’s hero destroy zombies in Moscow.
Khabensky spent two months in Budapest, where they filmed. He advised the producer to change the image of the Russians to be “less popular” than described in the script. The opinion of the Russian actor was heard. “Everything was spinning, they came up with a lot and very sensibly. And suddenly they cut it all out … “- Konstantin later said in an interview with Yuri Dudyu.
However, fans still have a glimmer of hope that the filmed “Moscow” scenes will be shown in the sequel “War of the Worlds Z”. Meanwhile, Khabensky crushes the living dead only in our imaginations. But it is rumored that the episodes were cut due to their increased compactness, so everything had to look impressive.