Yahoo News Actor-Turned-President Zelenskyy Is the 'Tom Hanks of Ukraine': 'Fearless' Performer and Devoted Family Man
Guillaume Herbaut/Agence VU/Re Volodymyr Zelenskyy
Weeks into facing a brutal invasion from neighboring Russia and Ukraine still refuses to bend — a tenacity, and stubbornness, highlighted every time Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy shows his face from the threatened capital of Kyiv, as Vladimir Putin's forces draw closer.
Zelenskyy, an actor-turned-politician, has addressed his people and the world repeatedly since the Russian attack began in force on Feb. 24, appearing in selfie-style videos and waving off offers of evacuation.
"We will fight to the end," he told the U.K. House of Commons in an unprecedented video address earlier this week that ended with a standing ovation. "We will continue fighting for our land, whatever the cost."
Watching halfway around the world in Los Angeles, his longtime friend and colleague David Dodson, a filmmaker, was not surprised by Zelenskyy's derring-do.
"Physically, Volodya is not a tall guy — like, 5-foot-6 or actually 5-foot-3 to be honest — but he is monumental in character," Dodson, who edited 10 and directed three of Zelenskyy's movies, tells PEOPLE in this week's issue. "He's always been fearless."
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Maya Maksimova David Dodson and Volodymyr Zelenskyy
By many accounts, Putin has badly underestimated his foe. Before Zelenskyy was swept into the presidency in a landslide 2019 win, the 44-year-old was known as a comedian and actor throughout both Ukraine and Russia, neighboring European countries that share deep cultural ties now strained by war.
On the world stage, Zelenskyy is a novice: Before now, he was perhaps best known for a 2019 call from then-President Donald Trump for a "favor" that led to Trump's impeachment.
But Zelenskyy's camera-honed way with words, his social media savvy and intuition for stagecraft have helped stir an outnumbered and outgunned — but proud — nation to resist their more powerful invaders.
"He's perfect for the role," says Charles Kupchan, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former National Security Council adviser on Ukraine.
"He's an actor. He knows how to relate to people and tap into their emotions," Kupchan says of Zelenskyy. "There's nothing wooden about him. He's the real deal, and his defiance and fighting spirit are inspiring not just Ukrainians but the world."
Iva Zimova/Panos Pictures Panos/Redux Volodymyr Zelensky when he won the presidential election in 2019
Born and raised in southeastern Ukraine, Zelenskyy, a Jew whose first language was Russian, studied to be a lawyer in college before turning to comedy. It was during his university years that he started dating Olena Kiyashko, a classmate studying architecture. As it happens, the pair had grown up in the same town but never met.
When Zelenskyy formed a sketch-comedy troupe called Kvartal 95 with some high school buddies, Olena left architecture for script writing alongside him. The two were a couple for eight years before marrying in 2003, when she took on her husband's surname with the feminine variation, Zelenska.
"They're so good together," says Lily, a college friend of the 44-year-old Ukrainian first lady. "They have a goodness in them. These are two people who love each other very much. He is comic, she is witty."
Zelenskyy relished his roles in front of the cameras, says Dodson, including in Zelenskyy's hit TV show Servant of the People, which featured him as a populist school teacher improbably elected as president. The series made him a superstar and household name in both Ukraine and Russia.
RELATED: How Ukraine's President Zelenskyy Transformed from Popular Comedian to Wartime Leader
olenazelenska_official/Instagram Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, wife Olena Zelenska and their two children
Meanwhile, his wife preferred to stay behind the scenes, writing for his productions. Still, says Dodson, "They see each other as equals."
While they worked in show-business, the couple raised two children, daughter Aleksandra, now 17, and son Kiril, 9. In 2014, Aleksandra played Zelenskyy's daughter in one of his films, which have mostly been shot in Ukraine or Russia.
"He was the Tom Hanks of Ukraine," says Dodson. "And he was a big celebrity in Russia. Nobody there thought of him as a villain, which is why there's such a disconnect between Russian propaganda now what the reality is." (Putin has told Russians that Ukraine has to be liberated from Nazis and far-right nationalists. Zelenskyy lost relatives in the Holocaust.)
"It's hard for Putin's ridiculous claims to jive with the Russian people," says John Herbst, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine now at the Atlantic Council.
Out of the spotlight, Zelenskyy "is without question one of the kindest souls that I've ever met," says Dodson. "When you're around him, there's no feeling of celebrity or of remoteness. You feel like a friend. You feel like he's listening."
Sergei SUPINSKY/AFP/Getty
"In the three films that I directed him in, every time he would walk onto the set, he would make me feel like I was [Steven] Spielberg," Dodson adds. "He gives you that trust, and he empowers you to do the very best of whatever it is that you want to do."
In 2018, during the filming of Zelenskyy's last films before he took office, it became an open secret around Kvartal 95 that he would run for president, Dodson says.
"I would go up to his office and, if there were a pile of cell phones on his desk, you knew everyone inside was there to talk about the campaign and nobody wanted anything recorded," Dodon remembers.
Zelenskyy named his political party Servant of the People — referencing his hit series and harnessing an emerging energy among voters who had widely protested a previous president. He claimed a 73-percent landslide victory in April 2019, promising to clean up corruption and make peace with Russia, who had stationed 70,000 troops along the eastern border and was stirring separatist violence there.
That effort taught him another hard lesson, observers say.
"He learned the hard way that peace with Moscow would require him to give Moscow control," says Herbst.
Maya Maksimova David Dodson and Volodymyr Zelenskyy
What Zelenskyy would not give, Russian President Putin is now determined to take. Under threat of assassination, the entire Zelenskyy family remains in Ukraine.
Zelenska, out of sight with their children, joins Zelenskyy's rallying cry over social media. To NATO, the first lady who once stuck to "soft power" topics like museums and child nutrition pleads on Instagram for international support: "Save our children, because tomorrow it will save yours!"
Meanwhile, Dodson expects his friend will "fight until the very end, no matter what that end turns out to be."
That's certainly true. On Monday, after staying in undisclosed locations, the president was at his desk in Kyiv, posting a video from the presidential office suite. "I'm not afraid of anyone," he said. "For as long as it takes to win this patriotic war."
* With reporting by SUSAN KEATING
