Helen Mirren’s Close Links to Tolstoy’s Wife Role
Dame Helen Mirren, who recently starred as Leo Tolstoy’s wife Sofya in the flick The Last Station, has found herself closer to the role than she ever thought possible. The stepson of a distant cousin of Dame Helen married Sofya and Leo’s second child Tanya, according to Russian historian Mikhail Mayorov.
When Sukhotin’s wife died, Tolstoy did not allow Tanya to marry him. In 1899, when she was 33, he gave in but wept in the horse-drawn carriage as he took her to the wedding. Also, Tolstoy’s only known piece of music, an unnamed waltz, dating from 1849, was co-written with Kirill Zybin, a distant relative of Dame Helen, 64.
Dame Helen’s grandpa Pyotr was a tsarist officer in London when the Bolsheviks came to power. He did not go back to Russia and started driving a cab. One of her Russian cousins Anastasia Muromskaya, 18, a mathematics student, said: “We are so proud that Helen is playing this role. She carries the Russian soul.”