Armenian Charlie Chaplin
Rafael Kotanjyan:
The art may be named as art if it leads to catharsis, something accumulates in you and leaves a trace. You experience it. The sense of the art is to cause aspiration to beauty if not the overturn in people. I see that films with my participation, shot in both in Russia and Ukraine, are still demonstrated. Those were perfect works, their authors had something to tell.
I have enjoyed all pleasures of the profession of an actor: I am famous and I have been assessed at true worth. I keep my dreams to myself, I do not like to talk about them, but anyway, I try to make them come true. I go up stage by stage, like a ten-storied building is built floor by floor. I don’t know what floor I am on, but there are still floors I have to reach. I have some ideas, but like all actors, the people’s artists are a little bit superstitious. They say if you speak much of your dream, it may not come true.
I do believe that if a person is completely devoted to any idea, it will be fulfilled. Judging from my experience, I can say that even misfortune comes for a reason. It is grounded, it is a result of some sin or a mistake. Possibly, a misfortune tests you, whether you are able to overcome it with dignity. In this sense I believe in the fortune. The main thing is that your inner God live so that you are not going to be disappointed later.
Happiness appears as a result of satisfaction. I have been satisfied with several circumstances: my work, the family and with a newly born member of my family – my granddaughter.
I do not have to live life all over again. If I had to live my life over again, I would have done everything the same way. Is it worth living everything all over again? The life would lose its novelty.
God gives us so much! A human being must enjoy everything and give people around the same. It is awful when a person can’t succeed as an artist, a woman, a man. One can’t imagine worse fortune. A person lives, has everything, but he has nothing because he is dissatisfied with everything. The unsatisfied person is awful. Dissatisfaction does not appear from nothing. A person is an architect of one’s own fortune.
A chance is not given more than two-three times. You may lose it if you are not ready and regret about it the rest of the life, but such opportunity will not occur again. I like to tell my students over and over again: “Be always ready that one day the door will open and you will be invited in.
