Lyudmila Tselikovskaya was a Russian film and stage actress, and unofficial sex symbol in the 1940s Soviet Union. She was loved by general public, but was censored under the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin.

She was born Lyudmila Vasilyevna Tselikovskaya on September 8, 1919, in Astrakhan, Russia. Her father, Vasili Tselikovsky, was an orchestra conductor, her mother was an opera singer. Young Tselikovskaya studied piano at the Gnesin School of Music in Moscow, then, from 1937 to 1941 she studied acting at the Shchukin Theatrical School of the Vakhtangov Theatre, graduating in 1941 as an actress.