15 November 2022 09:20
The tragedy wiped out the artist’s family life.
Olga Mateshko has appeared on the screen dozens of times over the years of her career and is remembered by the audience for many major and minor roles. The public was always happy to meet her new projects, but few of them knew how tragic her personal life was.
She met her future husband Alexander Itygilov while studying at VGIK and immediately fell in love with him. After some time, the lovers got married, and five years later their son Sasha was born. The young family lived happily ever after, but the tragedy canceled all their plans.
The fact is that Itygilov decided to shoot the film “This is us, Lord!”, The work of which took place 200 kilometers from the Chernobyl NPP. The film crew constantly used pyrotechnics, which, as doctors later determined, raised radioactive dust into the air that had settled after the accident. As a result, Mateshko’s husband constantly breathed poisonous air for six months.
“He actually spent six months in hell”, — recalled the actress in an interview.
During filming, Itygilov developed pulmonary sarcoma. The disease proved to be so serious that it could no longer be saved: he died within months at the age of 45. An unexpected death knocked Mateshko down, and she could not recover for a long time, so she withdrew from the public and moved to the United States. The actress no longer acts in films and according to some media reports, she still lives in America.
