Kirill Safonov

Kirill Leonovich Safonov (Russian: Кири́лл Лео́нович Сафо́нов; born 21 June 1973), is a Russian actor, director, singer, poet and composer.

Kirill Safonov was born on 21 June 1973 in the East Siberian village Yermakovskoe. Safonov's mother and two sisters currently reside in Ashkelon, Israel.

Safonov spent his childhood years in the Krasnoyarsk region. He attended school in Lviv, Ukraine, where his family moved around the time he was seven years old. His mother, Galina Semenovna, worked as a Director of the Lviv House of Pioneers in the 1980s, which enabled him to attend various clubs and read poetry at concerts. When he was 12 years old, his parents divorced. To help his mother, who had to raise three children on her own, Kirill worked in construction brigades while still in high school.

Kirill wanted to become an actor since his childhood. One of his first roles was the role of a mayor in a school play. After high school, he applied to the faculty of directing in the Cultural Institute of the city of Rivne. Successfully passing the creative rounds, he flunked out on the Ukrainian language test. After the failure with the theatrical institution, Kirill got a job as a seller of paintings in an art exhibition, and painted paintings for sale.

In the early 1990s, Kirill Safonov married to Elena and moved back to Krasnoyarsk, where his family moved back earlier.

In 1993, he enrolled in the theater faculty of the Krasnoyarsk Institute of Arts. After completing the first course, Kirill successfully passed the audition and was transferred to the second course of GITIS (Russian Academy of Theatre Arts), workshop of Andrey Goncharov. In 1997, the young actor was expelled from the fourth year of the Institute.

A turning point in his career came in 2006. As an already well-known Israeli artist, Safonov came to the Moscow film festival, in a competitive program which included the film Half-Russian Story in which he played one of the leading roles.

During his life in Israel, Kirill starred in films like Dust (2000), This Evening: The Survivor (2002), The Bird Doesn’t Mind (2003), Under the Sign of "Venus" (2004), Half-Russian Story (2006), and others.

Kirill Safonov: I didn't leave Russia permanently, but I wanted to return as a winner, not as a looser. Representing the Israeli film Half-Russian Story, being an Israeli actor, meant victory to me. I decided for myself: wherever I’ll be offered a good job, there I will stay.

On 26 June 2016, Kirill Safonov presented his debut film The Fourth, in the competition of short films at the Moscow International Film Festival