Unsurprisingly, Plisetskaya captivated the minds of numerous film directors. Her Betsy Tverskaya, as performed in the classic Soviet film Anna Karenina by Aleksandr Zarkhi, was a masterpiece of acting, rivaling her ballet roles in emotional expressiveness. And it was not her only film appearance: She also played the role of real-life Belgian singer Désirée Artôt in Tchaikovsky (1969) and the muse of Lithuanian painter Mikalojus Čiurlionis in Zodiac by Jonas Vaitkus. Later, she also gave the great Russian stage director Anatoly Efros the idea to adapt Ivan Turgenev's Torrents of Spring as a play filmed for TV.
"It was her idea, to perform a stage role and a ballet dance in the same play... As was usual for me, I decided to say yes so as not to offend her, and cop out later on some excuse," the director himself recalled.
"I always comply only to disappear later, but I never manage to pull it off, and it was definitely out of the question then, since it was impossible to get rid of Plisetskaya. You still think you can back out of it, but somehow you're already on your way to the ballet school where she's rehearsing – and how she rehearses!"
Sadly, Plisetskaya had never performed "pure" stage roles. However, she did play a white-socks-and-wooden-sandals-clad celestial fairy in Nagoromo, a Japanese Noh play.