Poltava

Zhanneta "Zhanna" Trofymovna Prokhorenko was a Ukrainian-born Soviet-era actress, best known to European and North American audiences for her role... in Grigori Chukhrai's 1959 film, Ballad of a Soldier. She was born in Poltava, Ukraine, and grew up in central Ukraine before she and her family moved to Leningrad. She graduated from the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography in 1964. She was awarded People's Artist of the USSR in 1988. Prokhorenko married twice: Her first husband was film director Evgeniy Vasilyev , they had one daughter actress Ekaterina Vasiyeva . Her second husband, writer Artur Makarov, was murdered in 1995. She died in Moscow on 1 August 2011, aged 71, from undisclosed causes.
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Andriy Mykhailovych Danylko , better known as his drag character Verka Serduchka , is a Ukrainian comedian and pop and dance singer. In the role of... Serduchka, he represented Ukraine in the Eurovision Song Contest 2007 and finished in second place. In his career Serduchka has sold over 600,000 records in Ukraine. In 1990, Andriy Danylko started to create the character Verka Serduchka, a flamboyant middle-aged female railroad car steward from a rural family. At a humor contest in Poltava on 4 January 1991, he presented Verka Serduchka publicly for the first time. He invented the character's name by combining the randomly picked first name Verka and the last name of a former school classmate, Anya Serduk. Apart from pop and dance numbers, Danylko has also performed ambient musical compositions under his real name. His popularity, however, is firmly established on the stage personality of Verka Serduchka, and most of his performances are done under this stage name.
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