In cinema he got his big break when director Elem Klimov offered him the lead role in the satiric film Adventures of a Dentist (1965).

His next work in cinema was a role of Alyosha in critically acclaimed The Brothers Karamazov (1969) based on Dostoevsky's eponymous novel, which made him known.

In 1977, he starred in another Ryazanov hit, Office Romance, as timid statistician Anatoly Novoseltsev, alongside Alisa Freindlich, in which he also debuted as a singer.

[5] His other notable films are The Days of the Turbins (1976) based on Mikhail Bulgakov's novel, The Garage (1979), Vertical Race (1983), A Cruel Romance (1984).

In this period he starred in the drama Mother (1990), Leonid Gaidai's comedy film Weather Is Good on Deribasovskaya, It Rains Again on Brighton Beach (1992), and the detective story Contract with Death (1998).