Belyaeva was born in Irkutsk and spent her childhood years in Nevinnomyssk, Northern Caucasus, raised with her younger sister by a single mother, who worked at a local construction site.
It was there that she was spotted by the assistant of film director Emil Loteanu, who was at the time looking for a teenage actress for the role of Olya Skvortsova in A Hunting Accident.
[1] In 1983, Loteanu filmed his wife in the biopic Anna Pavlova, where Belyayeva, playing the great ballerina, had also to perform most of her stage numbers.
For days on end I was studying footages of her stage performances, practiced in Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Theatre with finest ballet instructors," the actress remembered later.
Also highly successful were her performances in the lyrical comedy Her Romantic Hero (1984), film-operetta Pericola (1984) and The Black Arrow (1985), after Robert Louis Stevenson's novel.
Later Belyaeva spoke with great admiration and respect of her first husband, giving him credit for being her first serious tutor who in many ways shaped her as an actress.
Platon (born 1985), a Moscow University's Law faculty graduate, appeared in two films his early years, Bembi's Childhood, Детство Бемби, 1985) and Lermontov (1986, as an infant poet).