[3] Her father German Mikhailovich Birman was a Stabs-kapitan who served in the 51st reserve infantry battalion of the Imperial Russian Army.

Konstantin Fyodorovich Kazimir [ru], a well-known Bessarabian State Duma deputy and philanthropist, supported her and paid for the first year of studying.

[3] In 1911 Birman graduated from the courses and became an actress of the Moscow Art Theatre with the help of Vasily Kachalov, one of her teachers who sent a recommendation letter straight to Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko.

[3] Same year Birman debuted as a theatre director with Love – A Golden Book, an adaptation of Aleksey Tolstoy's play.

[4] In 1943 she relaunched Vassa Zheleznova and directed other adaptations of classic plays such as Leo Tolstoy's The Living Corpse and Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac.

[5] Birman's first roles in cinema date back to 1918: she played a small part in But He, Rebellious, Seeks for Tempest... crime drama and Lady Sophia Entwistle in the Buried Alive adaptation of Arnold Bennett's satirical book.

[6][7] She returned to big screen during the mid-1920s and played several comedy roles and episodes in a number of silent films, most notably a neighbor in Yakov Protazanov's The Tailor from Torzhok (1925) and Madame Irène in Boris Barnet's The Girl with a Hatbox (1927).

Her unusual appearance and expressive acting attracted comedy directors: between 1956 and 1957 she played two memorable grotesque characters in Andrey Tutishkin's Crazy Day and Alexander Stolbov's An Ordinary Man.

Birman played the main antagonist – Yefrosinya Staritskaya, mother of Vladimir of Staritsa – who wanted to see him as a new Russian Tsar and led the plot against Ivan the Terrible.

[11] As one of her close friends Rostislav Plyatt wrote in his memoirs, "She tried to stage The Blue Bird with her ward neighbors, hasting to demonstrate the work to her beloved Stanislavski!