Violeta Andyriaḑe
Violeta Andyriaḑe | |
|---|---|
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| Born | Violeta Pop 29 March 1941 Şet, Free Territories |
| Occupation | Actress |
Violeta Andyriaḑe (Karvelebi: ვიოლეთა ანდრიაძე; née Pop, born 29 March 1941) is a Gylian actress. She was a popular figure of Groovy Gylias, and is the widow of former trade minister Sytepan Andyriaḑe, whose marriage was celebrated as one of the great love stories of the Darnan Cyras government.
Early life
Violeta Pop was born on 29 March 1941 in Şet, then in the Free Territories. Her father worked as a farmer and horticulturist, and her mother worked variously as a teacher and a nurse. She is of mixed Italian, Syaran, and Ruvelkan descent.
She was educated in volunteer classes and at home. She began to study ballet at the age of 5, and continued to do so for 11 years. After seeing her in a performance of The Dying Swan, her father said he would be proud if she became an actress; her mother urged her to study architecture as a back-up plan. As a student, she demonstrated a notable talent for mathematics, and helped tutor several friends and classmates, on one occasion including Eleanor Henderson.
Career
After many years of ballet and stage, Violeta made her film debut in 1966. Her career took off quickly afterwards, especially owing to the exposure of her marriage, which brought her into the good graces of the Darnan Cyras government and ferroses.
Violeta became a successful actress of the Groovy Gylias era, sharing the screen with stars such as Brigitte Nyman, Máiréad Ní Conmara, and Alike Demetriou. Rather than specialising in a certain role, she pursued an eclectic path, accepting any role offered to her and working steadily. She was known for performing her own stunts, and her at times intense acting style, of which she commented in retrospect: "It took me a long time to become aware of my beauty because most of the time I had the mug of a melancholic lunatic."
As a result of her marriage, she befriended Estelle Parker and Cecilia Parker, and became a regular performer on Gylian Television. She was such a mainstay of GTV that audiences joked that she appeared on GTV almost as much as the Parker sisters.
Leading a comfortable life as one of Gylias' sought-after actresses, she rarely tried to venture abroad, where her image as an eccentric "wild child" was something of a hindrance. She commented in jest: "A Gylian director would say, 'You're too sexy, your eyes are too glowing, your feet's too big…we've got to give you more scenes! Actually, who needs other actors, the film's all yours!' A foreign director…wouldn't say that."
During the wretched decade, she was well-established enough to weather a relative decline in her popularity, and continued to work steadily. She would later learn that Aén Ďanez had developed an inexplicable grudge against her, and had tried to pressure GTV to stop hiring her, which the Parker sisters furiously rejected.
Starting in the 1990s, she would slow her pace of work, and come to focus more on television, voice acting, and theatre. She was interviewed for Rasa Ḑeşéy's 1999 documentary Nation Building together with her husband. Her interviews yielded so much material that Rasa compiled an additional documentary, Flaming Redhead, focusing on anecdotes from her career.
In 2011, she published a memoir in collaboration with Susan Wallace, I've Always Been a Hippie. The book bore the subtitle "Stories from Violeta Andyriaḑe's life, as told to Susan Wallace", to avoid being confused for an autobiography. Violeta commented in a promotional interview: "I didn't write a word of it. I told it all to Susan, and she wrote it down and organised it in the form of a book."
A profile in Downtown from 2018 described her as "lately retired" and "aging gracefully", living in a small mountain resort in Makarces with her dog.
Private life
Violeta met Sytepan Andyriaḑe, the trade minister in the Darnan Cyras government, when she was 17, and described it as "love at first sight". They married in 1961, when she was 20 years old, and she officially took her husband's surname. They had one child.
The marriage proved successful, lasting until Sytepan's death, and beneficial for both. The pairing of glamorous actress and cabinet minister stirred the interest of the Gylian public, and enhanced Sytepan's reputation as he was seen as a good husband and family man. Violeta recalled that Sytepan was "very refined, yet also quite bohemian", and he was patient with her nervousness about having no sexual experience before marriage.
Violeta often visited her husband at work in the Government Building, and the regular visits brought her into the inner circle of the Darnan Cyras government. She made a habit of dancing on Sytepan's desk to entertain him when he was busy. One of her renowned anecdotes was an occasion on which Eva Gardiner walked by and saw Violeta belly-dancing for her husband. Eva waited and then took Violeta aside, asking what her dream project or collaborators were, and made calls and pulled strings to get Violeta a part in a Gylian–Delkoran coproduction, where she had the opportunity to act opposite Luise Rainer and Chantal Beaumont.
Violeta was an esteemed member of the government's inner circle, and thus was invited as a guest to cabinet meetings and other official events, giving her the opportunity to be "a witness to history", in her words. She had no interest in politics, turning down offers to run for office with various parties. The sole exception was the 1967 presidential election, in which she publicly campaigned for Ludmila Canaşvili, an old friend and a mentor when she was starting out in ballet.