Meet actor Mark Eidelstein, the Russian star of the TV show ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith’ (PHOTOS)

He was born in Nizhny Novgorod in 2002. His mother is a teacher of stage speech at a theater school and he himself was lucky enough to get into the finals of a children's recitation contest. At the final stage, Mark was noticed by the dean of the acting department of the Russian Institute of Theater Arts. And he advised him to not think twice about choosing a profession – of course, only acting! 

Eidelstein chose the Moscow Art Theater School and, simultaneously, began acting in movies. Each role became an opportunity to learn something new. In the TV show ‘Smychok’ (‘The Gig’B), for example, he learned to paint in the style of Austrian artist Egon Schiele. 

“I want to walk on the edge all the time. I am interested in exploring the boundaries of what is allowed in cinema, what can be discussed and asked about,” admitted the actor in an interview.

In 2021, he played the lead role in the movie ‘Strana Sasha’ (‘The Land Of Sasha’) about an indecisive teenager, which made it into the program of the Berlin Film Festival. Critics called the movie inspiring. And Eidelstein himself explained that this is a story about what has changed in the perception of teenagers over several generations and the recognition that “human relationships and feelings remain the most important.”

The year 2024 was a landmark year in his career. He began collaborating with Roman Mikhailov, a mathematician and director. They have two works to their credit – ‘Zhar-Ptitsa’ (‘The Firebird’ and the mockumentary ‘Nado snimat filmy o lyubvi’ (‘We Need to Make Movies About Love’). Another collaboration is due out in 2025 – ‘Puteshestvie na solntse i obratno’ (‘Journey to the Sun and Back’), based on Mikhailov’s novel.

That same year, the science fiction movie ‘Sto let tomu vperyed’ (‘Guest from the Future’), where Eidelstein plays a schoolboy named Kolya Gerasimov, who manages to time travel into the future. It was during this filming that actor Yura Borisov told Mark that Sean Baker was looking for a "guy from Russia" for the lead role in his upcoming movie ‘Anora’.

It was urgently necessary to film the auditions, so the actor decided to approach them in an unconventional way – he recorded them naked. "This is the scene after sex, where I offer the heroine to be my girlfriend. The character is very rich and he must have some expensive clothes that I don't have. That's when it dawned on me: "Maybe I'll be naked?"

In May 2024, ‘Anora’ won the prestigious Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and Mark Eidelstein became the main crush of the female audience on both sides of the ocean. They could not help but notice the Russian actor’s resemblance to Timothée Chalamet – and, finally, at the Gotham Awards, these "twins" go to meet each other.

"The duo we needed," journalists wrote enthusiastically. They noted not only the actor's charm, but also his style. The New York Times, meanwhile, included Eidelstein in the list of the most fashionable people of the year.

He manages to act both in Russia and abroad. He played the role of brilliant mathematician Grigory Perelman, who proved the Poincaré theorem. Recently, it became known that Mark will play a major role in the second season of the TV show ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith’. 

And, between filming, he has time to write music (he recently released the album ‘Eternal Sincerity’), as well as directed a short film titled ‘Nadezhdozapisyvayuschaya Studio’ (‘Hope Recording Studio’).

Mark loves fashionable things – even as a schoolboy, he tried to be different from others. But, he does not regret that he chose acting over modeling: he participated in designer Gosha Rubchinskiy's fashion shows, but, in the end, he decided to “concentrate more on the content”.

Eidelstein dreams of trying his hand at directing a full length feature film and treasures a gift from the author of ‘Russian Ark’, director Alexander Sokurov – the book ‘Architecture of St. Petersburg’. And he believes that there will be time for all his ideas.