Sergei Vasilevich Makovetsky was born on June 13, 1958, in Darnitsa, a suburb of Kiev, Ukraine. Though he excelled at swimming and water polo and had aspirations to join the Soviet Olympic Team, his single mother encouraged him to pursue a more creative line of expression. When his application to study acting at Kiev Theatrical College was denied, Makovetsky moved behind the scenes working as a set decorator in Kiev before relocating to Moscow. Rejection from several Moscow theater schools and acting companies was bolstered by a more welcome rejection from the Soviet Army after Makovetsky gave a performance of imaginary illness symptoms so convincing that Army medical examiners excused him from military service. Accepted to the Shchukin Theatrical School at the Vakhtangov Theatre in Moscow, Makovsky graduated in 1980 and became a member ...