To followers of Soviet cinema, the name Chiaureli elicits mixed responses. Mikhail Chiaureli (1894-1974) was Stalin's chief cinematic propagandist, directing a series of hagiographies whose relationship to fact was, at best, tangential. His daughter Sofiko was, ironically, muse to Sergei Parajanov, one of the Soviet Union's most censored and oppressed film-makers.

Born at the height of Stalin's Terror, Sofiko Chiaureli came from the country's greatest cinematic dynasty. Both parents had been involved in the cinema since the 1920s so, when Moscow's theatre community was evacuated to Tbilisi during the war, regular visitors to the house included director Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko and the actress Olga Chekhov, Anton's widow.

Sofiko wanted to be a surgeon. But when, in 1955, her husband Georgi Shengelaya went to the state film school in Moscow to study directing, she joined the acting faculty. They made their film debuts the next year in Rezo Chkheidze's gentle comedy romance Chveni Ezo (Our Courtyard).

1956 was also the year of Khrushchev's secret speech to the twentieth party congress denouncing Stalin's cult of personality, and in the aftermath Stalin's cinematic apologist, Chiaureli's father, was sent to Sverdlovsk.

Back in Georgia, she joined the Kote Mardzhanishvili Theatre. She maintained the association until her death, also appearing at the Rustaveli Theatre in the 1960s. Her theatre career included Shakespeare, Gorky, Brecht, Sophocles, Gogol, Ibsen, Tennessee Williams and Schiller.

In 1968 her career entered a decisive phase when she played six roles in Sergei Parajanov's Sayat Nova. The director was already suspect, on account of his mystical films rooted in Caucasian nationalism, and had been imprisoned for homosexuality in 1947.

Sayat Nova's engagement with Armenian culture ruffled Soviet feathers. Sergei Yutkevich was brought in to produce a version that clarified the narrative and blurred the nationalism and it was released abroad, and dubbed into Russian, as The Colour of Pomegranates. Parajanov, freed from a second spell in jail, was omitted from a 1979 Soviet book profiling cinema personalities and Chiaureli's entry overlooked the film. After Parajanov's third imprisonment Chiaureli appeared in his equally uncompromising Ambavi Suriamis tsikhitsa (The Legend of Suram Fortress, 1984), Ashug-Karibi (Ashik Kerib, 1988)

and his last, unfinished film The Confession (1990).

Chiaureli was both a compelling tragedian and romantic comedian. Her striking looks and powerful performances in various films and TV dramas made her one of the best-loved actors in the country.

The Locarno Film Festival Best Actress award for the romantic love story Mzekala Hevsurskaya (Khevsurian Ballad, 1965) was the first of several from abroad, while at home she won All-Union Film Festival awards in 1962, 1966 and 1974. She was made People's Artist of Georgia (1964) and Armenia (1979); won a State Prize in 1988; and gained Georgia's highest award, named after Shota Rustaveli, in 1998.

Her films range from the children's adventure Alibaba Aur 40 Chor (Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, 1980) to Natvris Khe (The Wishing Tree, 1976), the middle panel of Tengiz Abuladze's trilogy of Georgian history. Her political involvement extended to her becoming a deputy in the Supreme Soviet (1974-79), and she was able to use her position to improve conditions for her fellow actors.

Illness had kept her off the screen for some years but she returned for a final role in the acclaimed wartime story Mayak (The Lighthouse, 2006).

Chiaureli is survived by her two sons.

Sofiko Mikhailovna Chiaureli, Georgian actress, was born on May 21, 1937. She died on March 2, 2008, aged 70