Her voice is on tape exactly once. It surfaces in a hospital video that actor Richard Dreyfuss recorded on July 11, 2025, when he lost the word for his own diagnosis and his wife, Svetlana Erokhin, supplied it from off camera. The word was bronchitis, and it may be the only thing she has ever said in public that anyone actually recorded.
Outside of that moment and a handful of dated photographs, very little about her has been confirmed by an actual named source. Her age and her life before she met Dreyfuss have never been reported by anyone who could say how they know.
Table of Contents
Fast Facts
| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| Full name | Svetlana Erokhin |
| Born | Russia |
| Lives | San Diego area, California |
| Spouse | Richard Dreyfuss |
| Married | March 16, 2006 |
| Marriage number | His third |
| Birthday | March 10 (year unconfirmed) |
| Occupation | Not publicly known |
A Courthouse Wedding in Virginia
Dreyfuss and Erokhin applied for a marriage license at the Rockingham County Courthouse in Harrisonburg, Virginia, on March 16, 2006. Virginia does not require a waiting period, so the two were married the same day.
Dreyfuss happened to be in Harrisonburg that week for an appearance at James Madison University, and the school had no advance notice. “We had no idea,” JMU spokesman Andy Perrine told PEOPLE afterward. It is one of the only quotes about Erokhin’s life that exists on the record at all, and it came from a university employee, not from either member of the couple.
Dreyfuss’s second marriage, to accountant Janelle Lacey, had ended in 2005, the year before he married Erokhin. She became his third wife.
The 2014 DUI Arrest
Erokhin was arrested in Encinitas, California, on June 2, 2014, on suspicion of DUI and hit and run. According to TMZ’s original report, she crashed her car into a wooden fence, ruptured a high pressure water line, and drove off before San Diego County sheriff’s deputies caught up with her about two miles away. She told TMZ at the time that she believed she had passed her field sobriety test and had only had one glass of wine.
The case was referred to the San Diego County District Attorney’s office. No public record of an outcome has ever surfaced. It remains the rare instance of Erokhin making news that had nothing to do with her husband.
What Isn’t Actually Confirmed
Erokhin has never given an interview. She isn’t known to have a public social media account, and she has never commented publicly on her marriage or the years before it.
That hasn’t stopped specific claims from spreading online: an exact birth year, a first husband, even a grown daughter with a career of her own. None of it traces back to a source who has actually confirmed it. Her birthday is the one exception. On March 10, 2024, Dreyfuss posted “Happy Birthday to my wife Svetlana! I love you!” on his verified social media account. He never mentioned her age.
Wire service photographers have documented a decade of her public appearances, each one dated:
- Sundance Film Festival premiere of Zipper, January 2015
- AFI Life Achievement Award gala for John Williams, June 2016
- AFI Life Achievement Award gala for Diane Keaton, June 2017
- Book Club premiere, May 2018
- Sweetwater premiere and TCM Classic Film Festival, April 2023
Two Decades Later
Property records show the couple bought a home in Carlsbad, California, in the months after the wedding, sold it about two years later, and settled into the Encinitas area by 2008, where they still live. They also travel frequently to New York, London, and Sun Valley, Idaho, and the marriage has already outlasted his first two combined.
Two months after the hospital video, on September 15, 2025, they appeared together again at the Los Angeles premiere of Waltzing With Brando. Dreyfuss arrived in a wheelchair, still recovering, and leaned on Erokhin as they made their way down the carpet, the same arrangement it has mostly been for twenty years, him in front of the cameras, her a step away, her actual voice captured on tape exactly that one time.
