In reality Basilashvili's maternal grandfather was a Russian Orthodox priest and an architect, who participated in the construction of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow.

Together with Doronina, Basilashvili joined the troupe at the Bolshoi Drama Theater (BDT) in Leningrad under the leadership of the legendary director Georgy Tovstonogov.

There his stage partners were such stars as Kirill Lavrov, Tatiana Doronina, Alisa Freindlich, Lyudmila Makarova, Svetlana Kryuchkova, Zinaida Sharko, Valentina Kovel, Innokenty Smoktunovsky, Oleg Borisov, Pavel Luspekayev, Sergei Yursky, and many other remarkable Russian actors.

Basilashvili plays a weak-willed man in his mid-life crisis, who is torn between two nice women, his wife and his mistress, and all three of them become entangled in the game of lies and personal demands, being at the same time strangled by the stagnant Soviet reality.

Dreams, a wild comedy about Perestroika is especially remarkable: in it Basilashvili tried on several images, those of a noble count from the past, a pornographer and a rock star.

Among the actor's other works of the early 21st century one can mention the role of Prof. Fyodorov in the historical film The Romanovs: An Imperial Family (2000) and General Yepanchin in the TV series The Idiot (2003) directed by Vladimir Bortko after the famous novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Eventually he became a member of the pro-democratic group of representatives in the Russian Parliament, and a supporter of such politicians as Anatoly Sobchak and the first President of Russia Boris Yeltsin.