Valentin Yosifovich Gaft was born on September 2, 1935 to Ukrainian parents recently relocated to Moscow. Gaft entered the Moscow Theater School in 1953 at age 18 and made his film debut three years later in Mikhail Romm’s “Murder on Dante Street”. Over a half century of performing Valentine Gaft has been associated with the Mossovet and Leninsky Komsomol Theater troupes and the Sovremennik Theater which Gaft joined in 1969 and where he continues to work to this day. Gaft was named a People’s Artist of the Soviet Union in 1984 and has authored series of highly acidic epigrams satirizing members of the Russian film and theater communities.