She was active in Soviet film and theatre from 1933 to 1948, whereupon she was raped by Lavrentiy Beria at his residence,[2] arrested for alleged anti-state agitation and propaganda, and sentenced to ten years labour at Steplag.

Instead, he took her to his dacha where he offered to free her father and grandmother from NKVD prison if she submitted.

Okunevskaya was arrested shortly after the encounter and sentenced to solitary confinement in the Gulag, which she survived.

From 1959 to 1979, she worked as an artist for Gosconcert (the Soviet State Concert Company) and Mosconcert (its Moscow equivalent).

Her previously robust health declined rapidly due to complications from surgery in 2000, ending in her death in Moscow in 2002 at the age of 88.