Seasoned actor Alexander Belyavsky, 80, most known for his role as a criminal mastermind in the popular 1979 television miniseries "The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed," leaped to his death Saturday, investigators said.
"It seems he had abnormalities in his brain functioning and could not control himself anymore," a source familiar with the situation told Interfax.
Belyavsky, a theater and movie actor, jumped from a window located between the fifth and six floor in the stairwell of his building on Bolshoi Tishinsky Pereulok in an apparent suicide, investigators told RIA-Novosti.
Family and friends said Belyavsky was chronically depressed after suffering a stroke in 2003 that left him speechless.
Belyavsky is most known for playing a mobster nicknamed Fox in "The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed," which also starred acclaimed Soviet bard Vladimir Vysotsky.
Charming and gentlemanly in real life, Belyavsky played the role of a cold-blooded criminal posing as an army officer to mask his identity.
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