Background
Godunov was born in Sakhalin, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union, in the Russian Far E.
Godunov was born in Sakhalin, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union, in the Russian Far E.
Godunov claimed descent from Tsar Boris Godunov. Godunov began his ballet studies in Riga in 1958, in the same class as Mikhail Baryshnikov. The two became friends and helped each other throughout their years there.
Godunov joined the Bolshoi Ballet in 1971 and rose to become Premier danseur.
After playing Lemisson, the Royal Musician, in The Thirty-first of June (Soviet, 1978) by J. B. Priestley, Godunov became well known in the Soviet Union as a movie actor. His roles included Vronsky in Anna Karenina (1976).
On August 21, 1979, while on a tour with the Bolshoi Ballet in New York City, Godunov contacted authorities and asked for political asylum. After three days, with involvement by United States. President Jimmy Carter and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, the United States. State Department was satisfied that Vlasova had chosen to leave of her own free will, and allowed the plane to depart.
This incident was dramatised in a 1986 movie Flight 222.
Vlasova later said that while Godunov loved American culture and had long desired to live in the United States, she felt she was "too Russian" to live in the United States. The couple divorced in 1982. The official reason for his release from the company was that there would not be sufficient roles for him after a change in the repertory.
He then traveled with his own troupes, danced as a guest artist with different prominent ballet companies worldwide, and turned to acting in Hollywood.
He seemed to be destined for stardom, but turned down many roles which typecast him as a dancer or another heavy as in Die Hard. On May 18, 1995, Godunov"s friends became concerned when he had been uncharacteristically quiet with his phone calls.
A nurse who had not heard from him since May 8 went to his home in the Shoreham Towers, West Hollywood, California, where his body was discovered. Godunov"s death was later determined to be caused by complications from hepatitis due to chronic alcoholism.
His ashes were scattered into the Pacific Ocean.
His memorial at Gates Mortuary in Los Angeles is engraved with the epitaph "His future remained in the past".