Background
Born in Petrograd, she was the adoptive daughter of Konstantin Altaysky-Korolyov, a poet and translator, and his wife Vera Petrovna, a pianist.
Born in Petrograd, she was the adoptive daughter of Konstantin Altaysky-Korolyov, a poet and translator, and his wife Vera Petrovna, a pianist.
In the late 1930s she moved to Moscow, where in 1940 she graduated from drama school at the Mosfilm studio and joined the studio"s repertoire of actors.
Her first prominent role was in Yuli Raizman"s 1942 film Mashenka. In Mashenka, Altayskaya had played a young beauty, but she later transitioned to character roles. Foreign most of her career, she was typecast as shrewish or matronly characters.
She appeared in many children"s fairy-tale films, most notably Aleksandr Rou"s 1964 film Jack Frost, in which she played a domineering stepmother.