He is known for playing the spy Mikhail Tulyev in the "Resident" quartet of films, Beware of the Car (1966), The Hot Snow (1973), and many others, and was a popular actor.

After this break, Zhzhonov was accepted by the Leningrad Theatrical School, where he studied under renowned director Sergei Gerasimov,[1] graduating in 1935.

[1] In 1936, Zhzhonov's brother Boris, a Leningrad University student, was arrested for "anti-Soviet activities and terrorist leanings", during a period of political repression by the government in the wake of the assassination of Sergei Kirov.

Zhzhonov's family was exiled to Kazakhstan; however, Georgiy instead headed to the set of Komsomolsk, a film being made by Gerasimov in Komsomolsk-on-Amur.

[1][2] In 1938, Zhzhonov was arrested on political motives was forced to confess, and sentenced multiple times to seventeen years in the gulag at Kolyma.

Two years later he was fully released, thanks to the efforts of Gerasimov (although banned from living in larger industrial cities), and went to Sverdlovsk.

In 1968[b] and he played the spy Mikhail Tulyev in The Secret Agent's Blunder (Resident's Mistake), directed by Venyamin Dorman [ru].

[3][4] His awards include:[citation needed] In 2005, Zhzhonov spent his 90th birthday acting in the Russian Army Theatre.