The smile, optimism and unquenchable passion for life never left Nikos Galanos, who passed away yesterday, at the age of 80, after a tough and brave battle with cancer over the last three years, a loss that marks the end of an era as he was the last Zen premiere of the golden age of Greek cinema.
This of course does not mean that he did not encounter difficult obstacles along the way. Quite the opposite. As a child of a poor family, he experienced from a very early age what deprivation and the daily struggle for a living meant: "If you think that we ate meat once a week, that I put on long pants at the age of 16 or 17, and I remember that my first pair of pants was brought by a friend of my brother, the middle one, who traveled on ships and brought me a pair of jeans from America and I put on my first pair of long pants. Or if you think that the groups, the friends, that we used to go around the neighborhood, we would go to the main road and we would see a motorcycle, the "Floretta", or a car passing by occasionally and we would look at it like a dream. These things did not exist back then! "All of this made you sad at some point and you said, 'Oh, why can't I have this too?', but on the other hand, I believe that it shaped character," he had confessed in a previous interview on Nikos Hatzinikolaou's show "Face to Face."
However, the difficulties of life not only did not discourage him, on the contrary, they led him to the choice to take responsibility for himself from a young age. He was only 16 years old when he left his father's home to live alone. Freedom always attracted him. And not only did he succeed, but within a very short period of time he found himself starring alongside the biggest stars of cinema and theater: Karezi, Vougiouklaki, Kourkoulos and so many others.
He let life take its course, he didn't chase it, neither professionally nor personally. He didn't chase roles, they came and found him. He didn't think much about it when he was called upon to make an important decision about his personal life, even if that meant saying the big "yes" to a wedding when he was only 18 years old or walking up the steps of the church for the second time even though he knew, deep down, that marriage wasn't for him.
Yet he never expressed regret for any of his choices. He viewed them all as valuable experiences that defined his existence.
The first unknown cancer diagnosis
The first time in his life that he felt fear paralyzing his body was 25 years ago, when during a routine examination he discovered that he had cancer, and an aggressive form at that.
"The most difficult moment for me was in 2001, when, due to a random examination, I heard the doctor tell me that my biological end was a matter of a few months. Fortunately, everything went well, but it was the first time I came into direct contact with death," he confessed in the interview he gave a few years ago to Yannis Pantazopoulos for "Lifo".
The initial shock, however, was succeeded by the source of strength for life and the belief in a miracle that eventually happened. To ward off evil, he did not tell anyone about his diagnosis. He entered the hospital under a different name and eventually, despite the ominous predictions, he emerged victorious and continued his life, isolating this serious adventure in a small, closed box of his memory.
Unfortunately, almost two decades later, the disease returned. But this time he didn't give up either. He had already beaten cancer once and believed he could do it again. That's why the new diagnosis didn't change his life much. He underwent his treatments and then went to TV shoots as usual, went out with his partner and his friends, maintained his mood and optimism, and this was clearly reflected in his appearance. He always remained elegant and charming.
In the last year, however, his health deteriorated, forcing him to abandon his professional duties. The last months of his life were spent between hospital and home, facing his greatest fear, which was, as he himself had confessed, being paralyzed, helpless, trapped, fully aware of what was happening to him.
The heavy hand of Nikos Kourkoulos
Although Nikos Galanos loved acting very much and enjoyed the roles he was assigned from time to time, there were some moments when he had to literally bleed in order for the artistic result to come out as natural as possible.
Among the most difficult shoots of his career were those for two films he made with Nikos Kourkoulos, who, as it turned out, had a heavy hand. Both were shot in the same year, 1970.
The first was "Astrapogiannos", where he played the evil brother of his beloved Kourkoulos, played by Niki Triantafyllidi. "The director, Nikos Tzimas, wanted us to do a scene with a stick. And Kourkoulos says to me: "Can you stand it if I slap you?" I say to him: "Slap it". And he slaps me with his hand so hard that my cheek swelled up. The next day I didn't go to the shoot," he had recounted.
Just a few months later, he found himself fighting in Halyvourgiki, again with Kourkoulos, in scorching temperatures, this time for the needs of the film "Zero Visibility": "The script said that we had to roll down a hill, playing with wood. This hill was made of iron filings, which were burning from the sun. Kourkoulos was wearing pants and a T-shirt. However, Foskolos wanted me naked from the waist up. When I finished and went home, my whole body was burned by the hot iron we were rolling on and my back was full of scratches, as if I had been scratched. It took me many days to put on a shirt."
Source: protothema.gr
