[1] Tamara Petrovna Syomina was born on 25 October 1938 in Lgov, Kursk Oblast into a family of a soldier, tank platoon commander Pyotr Fyodorovich Bokhonov.

Her parents wanted to send her to work at a factory but Tamara intended to study and she decided to go to the school of young workers.

She played in the eccentric comedy Man Overboard by Andrei Sakharov; on the second course she met with the young but already famous Marlen Khutsiev in the film Two Fedors; during the third year Syomina coped with the complex dramatic role in the movie It all starts with the road by Villen Azarov.

In 1959 Mikhail Schweitzer invited Syomina for the role of Katyusha Maslova in the film adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's novel Resurrection.

Once Schweitzer noted that Syomina is too thin and asked if she read Tolstoy's novel: in it Katyusha Maslova is a rather plump woman, even stout.

And then everyone at the VGIK hostel was on a mission to "save" Tamara: food was always brought to her so that she quickly gained necessary physical form for the role.

On the second course Syomina married her fellow VGIK student Vladimir Prokofiev and their marriage lasted until his very death.