Fyodor Mikhailovich Kozlov ((1882-1956) was a Russian ballet dancer who, from 1901, toured with the Diaghilev company.
After touring internationally for some years, Kosloff settled in the United States in 1912, staging ballets in New York and providing choreography for Broadway musicals.
In 1917, Agnes DeMille encouraged her uncle Cecil to use Kosloff’s talents in one of his films. He made his acting debut in The Woman God Forgot (1917), and combined a film career with stage acting and ballet. He also opened a school of dance.Meanwhile, his private life became increasingly chaotic and, at times violent, as he maintained relationships with multiple women, some of them underage.
Kosloff acted in films throughout the 1920s, usually in ‘Latin lover’ roles, and mostly for DeMille. He more or less stopped acting after the introduction of sound, his last significant appearance being as Electricity in the ‘Ballet Mécanique’ in Madam Satan, to which it is also believe he contributed choreography (LeRoy Prinz being the credited dance director). His final screen appearance was as a dance instructor in Stage Door (1937).
Kosloff continued to work as a dance director, and his final contribution to cinema was work on DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1956).
