Natalya Varley (born June 22, 1947) is a Soviet and Russian film and theater actress, who became famous in 1966 for her part in the comedy Kidnapping, Caucasian Style. In 1989 she was designated as a Meritorious Artist of RSFSR. Natalya was an artistic child; she started writing poetry at the age of four, was fond of painting and studied music. In the late 1950s, as the family settled in Moscow, she entered the Tsvetnoy Boulevard Circus's Children Studio and made a quick progress there, which was all the more impressive, considering she'd been a sickly child and suffered from rheumatism-related heart disorder which for several years prevented her from taking sports at school.After graduating the State Circus and Entertainment Art college in 1965, Varley joined the Moscow Tsvetnoy Boulevard Circus troupe as an equilibrist. n 1965, in Odessa where the troupe was on tour, Varley met a renown Soviet clown and film actor Leonid Yengibarov. He proved to be a kindred spirit and became a close friend, as well as occasional stage partner. Once Yengibarov invited the film director Georgy Yungwald-Khilkevich to watch their performance. Stricken by Varley's stage persona, the latter invited her for a minor role to his latest movie, The Formula of Rainbow. During the filming Varley was spotted by the assistant of another film director, Leonid Gaidai, who invited her to the auditions for his new project, Kidnapping, Caucasian Style. Amongst some 500 contenders there were celebrities like Natalya Fateyeva and Anastasiya Vertinskaya, but the director chose the 19-year-old amateur for the leading role. According to Gaidai, Varley has won him with her ingénue charms, but she later opined that one particular episode might have proved to be the decisive one....So I came to the Mosfilm, read a script fragment and did the donkey scene. Then Gaidai asks me, somewhat diffidently: 'And now, Natasha, could I ask you perhaps to undress - down to a swimming suit?' 'Sure', I said, and did. Everybody just went: 'Aahh!' It is now that for actresses undressing is business-as-usual. In those years the Soviet cinema, as well as the Soviet people, were so much more shy. But for me the swimming-suit was a kind of circus uniform, I got used to it. So we shoot the episode with a swimming-suit, and I think it was the one that made all the difference. Natalya and her heroine Nina were the complete opposites. "She was supposed to be self-assured, cheeky and optimistic. Whereas I've always been rather quiet, dreamy and romantic. So Gaidai had to re-mold me almost literally during the shooting, into a true "Komsomolka, sportsmenka and an all-round looker," she later reminisced. Kidnapping, Caucasian Style, which premiered on 1 April 1967, became a huge success and Varley found herself an overnight superstar. Hugely popular was "The White Bears' Song", recorded for the film by Aida Vedishcheva. Varley's speaking voice was over-dubbed too, by Nadezhda Rumyantseva. Years later, when Varley embarked upon successful musical career (to often perform the famous song very close to the original) and herself became a well-known voiceover artist, doubts as to the wiseness of such a move were raised. "Gaidai grossly mistreated Varley by stripping her of her own voice. Natasha would have done exactly the same except that maybe less forcefully," fellow actress and Gaidai's wife Nina Grebeshkova (cast in the film as a psychiatry ward doctor) later opined. Varley found herself in the focus of media attention; crowds of fans started to gather wherever she would arrive to perform with her Circus troupe. This sudden fame made her none the richer: Varley claims to have been paid 300 rubles (two average Soviet monthly wages) for the blockbuster the popularity of which never waned. In October 1967 the first Soviet horror movie, Viy (after Nikolay Gogol's novella of the same name) was premiered. Here Varley provided another striking performance, now as Pannochka, a murdered witch, rising off her coffin to torment and finally kill a hapless seminary student (played by Leonid Kuravlyov), who had inadvertently brought about her death. Several other films of the late 1960s featured Natalya Varley, who has by now left the Moscow Circus to become a Boris Shchukin Theatre Institute student. Among them were Seven Brides of Corporal Zbruyev and The Twelve Chairs, the latter again by Gaidai.

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