- World famous Soviet ballerina.
- After retiring from dancing, she became a choreographer and gave master classes around the world.
- She joined the Bolshoi in 1943, and became prima ballerina in 1960.
- Among her acclaimed roles were Odette/Odile in "Swan Lake", Aurora in "The Sleeping Beauty" and Carmen in "Carmen Suite".
- Her mother was a silent-film actress and her father an engineer who was posted to Spitzbergen, Norway. She spent part of her childhood there. Her father was arrested in 1937 and shot in 1938, a victim of Stalin's purges. Her mother was sent to a labor cap with her infant son, then exiled to Kazakhstan.
- Sister of choreographer Azari Plisetsky, cousin of Boris Messerer.
- Director of Spanish National Ballet 1988-1990.
- Dated Warren Beatty.
- Received the Order "For Merit to the Fatherland" for her loyalty to Russia as she refused to defect from the Soviet Union and stayed loyal to her native country unlike a lot of Russians, especially ballet dancers.
- She was named "Prima Ballerina Assolutta" in her own native homeland of Russia right before Natalia Makarova was.
- She remarked that it took her a long time to get "I, Maya Plisetskaya" written and published as she did all by herself without a co-author.
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