Among the family friends were renowned Soviet actors Lyudmila Tselikovskaya, Mikhail Zharov, Vsevolod Pudovkin, a star circus comic Rumyantsev.

Later, as Andrey Goncharov came to become the head of the theatre, she created several outstanding characters, notably Blanche in Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire and the Mayoress Anna Andreevna in Nikolai Gogol’s Revizor.

She had to wait several years for another big part, in Konstantin Khudyakov's Such a Short Long Life (1975), co-starring Alexander Lazarev, fellow Mayakovsky Theatre actor whom she married in 1960.

Her real breakthrough came when Eldar Ryazanov invited her to play Olya Ryzhova in his highly successful intellectual comedy Office Romance.

In the 1980s and 1990s Nemolyaeva continued to appear on screen regularly; critically acclaimed were her parts of Madam Zizi (Say a Word for a Poor Hussar), actress Nina Ossovskaya (The Intrusion), Irina in The Relatives (TV play) and Matilda (The Dame’s Visit).