Viktor Nikolaevich Belan, better known professionally as Dima Bilan, is a Russian actor, singer, songwriter and historian. He is a huge star in Russia with several hit records and numerous awards.
He represented his country at Eurovision twice within the span of two years. His first appearance was at the Eurovision Song Contest 2006 in Athens with the song Never Let You Go. He finished third in the semifinal with 217 points and second in the final with 248 points - a full 44 points behind the eventual winners Lordi.
His second attempt was at the Eurovision Song Contest 2008 in Belgrade with the song Believe, which he co-wrote. Again he qualified from the semifinal in third place, but unlike 2006 he went on to win the contest with 272 points, earning Russia its first victory.
Dima is one of five artists today to have won one year and finish second another year. Like Linda Martin, he won on his second attempt while finishing second on his first. As well, he is the only male in this elite group.
He also voiced the characters of Prince Hans and Branch in the Russian dubs of the animated films Frozen and Trolls respectively.
He participated in the 4th series of the Russian version of The Masked Singer as "Mamontonok" (Mammoth Cub) and was a joint winner with 2-time Eurovision participant Sergey Lazarev as "Skorpion" (Scorpion).
Trivia[]
- Dima Bilan was one of the three coaches of the Russian reality talent show The Voice Kids in seasons 1–4. One of his team's artist is Kristian Kostov, who represented Bulgaria at the 2017 contest.
- He is one of six Eurovision representatives to have voiced the character of Branch in an foreign-language dub of the Dreamworks film Trolls, the others being Waylon, Eyþór Ingi, Ralfs Eilands of PeR, Vaidas Baumila and Måns Zelmerlöw in the film's Dutch, Icelandic, Latvian, Lithuanian and Swedish dubs respectively.
- Additionally, he along with Eyþór and Vaidas reprised his role for the film's 2020 sequel Trolls World Tour, where he was joined by fellow representative Polina Gagarina as Queen Barb. Waylon and Måns were instead replaced by Buddy Vedder and Jonathan Jaarnek Norén respectively.