At Greek cinema many were the actors who were identified, even characterized by the roles they played. In fact, there were not a few cases where for some actors there were specific roles: the good, the bad, the ambitious, the persecuted poor, the ugly, the booby and so on.
And it was such an identification that the audience could hardly see an actor playing the opposite role. Here, we have two typical examples: of Dionysis Papagiannopoulou and Spyros Kalogiros. The first was identified with the role of the comedian, the good, sometimes grumpy, but always sweet father. When the role of the villain was exemplary in the film, the audience did bow down to their unsurpassed talent, but then they would probably see "Jenny-Jenny" to come to terms with the interpretation.
Spyros Kalogirou, again, was identified with the role of the "evil", the vicious. When, in the movie "The fairy and the lad" he had a comic role, the audience saw another side of him. A side that reflected the real character of the actor, since in his daily life he had nothing to do with his bad cinema. And not only Kalogirou. Many of the "bad guys" of Greek cinema, in fact, had nothing to do with the roles, while in some cases, their personal stories had a tragic touch.
So let's see which "bads" of cinema were actually good.
"I play the traitor so well to make people hate the traitors", Artemis Matsas once answered a relevant question. And so he revealed the tragic family history he carried, but also the motivation that pushed him to play the role of the German dossier in the cinema with incredible mastery.
The great actor knew from a very young age the horrors of the Nazi yoke, when they put his father of Jewish origin on the trains for the concentration camps. The family would never see him again, as he too was added to another number on the macabre list of Holocaust victims, another victim of the Nazi uprising.
The three children are going through difficult childhood years, like all Greek children, after all, and Artemis almost died from the hunger and hardships of the Occupation. So he grew up hating the Nazi occupiers, which is why he decided to play the role that no one wanted!
A role that the audience identified with so much, creating problems in the real life of the artist. Matsas ate wood at least twice in the street from spectators who could not distinguish the actor from the role! As the "Kathimerini" of the time remembered: "A ruthless hunt was waiting in the streets of Thessaloniki for the evil of Artemis Matsas cinema".
The resin of evil has remained indelible over time. "There is no way I can pass by Fokionos Negri - I live nearby - and they do not call me '' traitor '', '' ruffian '', '' tsifouti ''", Matsas himself recalled.
"The Germans love us. "They came as friends", he told the Cretans in "Dawn of Victory" the unforgettable conqueror of cinema, Dimos Starenios. And he was so convincing in the role of traitor accomplice of the conqueror, as if he never came close to dying in the Occupation groaning under the German boot. The "friend" of the Germans and later the famous "Old Ladas" was in fact a romantic communist.
The Egyptian Municipality of Starenios came to Greece exclusively to study acting as an exceptional talent. Although he never became the great film protagonist that everyone assumed he would become, he made his own career, while he fought he joined the EAM and the KKE later.
The persecutions he suffered from both the post-war regimes and the junta of colonels during his sinful seven years affected his professional career, as he never hid his political beliefs.
She held the scepter of the "evil" of Greek cinema, the mother-in-law that no bride-to-be would want, the oppressive mother and the insidious sister. The reason for Tasso Kavvadia, who with her unsurpassed talent uniquely interpreted the bad roles.
Her appearance in the movie "The Sin of Beauty" was simply shocking. In reality, however, the actress had nothing to do with the strict roles she played. He was a sweet man, modest and discreet, with classical studies and education.
He has also been portrayed in the public consciousness as one of the "bad guys". In reality, however, it has nothing to do with what he played. In fact, the Anestis Vlachos carries his own personal story, with misery, difficult years and an accident that cost him the loss of his eye.
In the beginning, the actor faced many financial problems and to cope with them, when he was not playing in the theater or the cinema, he worked part-time in construction. One day, while trying to nail a proca, he did not notice and injured his right eye. The delay of the doctors - as he says - led to the loss of his eye due to infection.
During the shooting of the movie "The girl in black", Anestis Vlachos met Elli Lampeti and Dimitris Horn and the then couple undertook all the costs of the operation in which he underwent eye surgery.
He became famous, mainly, through the roles of the evil that with great success. So much so that the audience (and his physiognomy was such) that the audience believed that somehow it would be the same in life outside the sail. But Nikos Tsachiridis was not like that.
A child of Pontus, he lost his father from a young age while he was forced to go to the bio-fight early to make ends meet for his family. He worked in construction for a living, until Nikos Koundouros discovered him in '54 and gave him a role in "Magic City". Apart from being an actor, Tsachiridis was also one of the best stuntmen in cinema.
If there was one type of top ten with the worst in cinema, the Spyros Kalogirou would figure in the first place. On the one hand, you say that this is the biggest injustice, since the actor was actually a sweet and romantic man. Nothing to do with the evil, vicious, black-haired man posing in the sail.
On the other hand, however, this is the best proof of his great talent: to "embroider" in these opposite roles. And it was so against the benevolent Spyros Kalogirou, that in the famous scene with Nikos Kourkoulos in "Lola" where they fight with knives because it was… "a lot of money Mars", the actor could not beat his good friend.
But also in other roles, such as in "Stefania" or in "Maria of Silence", he left his mark. The actor with the trembling voice and the wild presentation (how many of us as children were not afraid of him when he appeared on the screen?) Was actually very tender and romantic, used to write to the woman of his life, Evangelia Samiotaki (they have been married since 1952, until their death in 2009) poems.