The Greek actress, who was one of the greatest of her generation, played in several international theaters and shot more than seventy films, subjugating directors and filmmakers. It died on September 14 at the age of 93.
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Born September 3, 1929 in Chileomodi, near Corinth, in Greece, under the name of Irini Lelekou, raised in a family of intellectuals, who became an actress from childhood, then singer (interpreter in particular of the Symphonies de Vangelis And from Mikis Theodorakis) and committed woman, Irène Papas died, in Chileomodi, Wednesday September 14 at the age of 93, from Alzheimer’s disease which she had been reached since 2013. During her long career, which ‘Hissed the largest Greek actress of her generation, she played on several theater scenes in Greece, Italy, in the United States, recorded some records and shot in more than seventy films. Among the best known: the cannons of Navarone (1961), by J. Lee Thompson; Electre (1962) and Zorba Le Greek (1964), from Michael Cacoyannis; Z (1969), de Costa-Gavras.
Irene Papas also remains one of the most beautiful and fascinating faces of cinema. At their first meeting, some filmmakers were breathless. The screenwriter and director Alekos Sakellarios was one of them who lives in her a “living caryatid”. Thanks to him, she shoots her first film, lost angels, by Nikos Tsiforos, in 1948. Actress, she never asked herself, she has always been.
Raised by a teacher mother and a classic theater teacher who teaches her ancient Greek, little Irene goes up on boards at 12 years old, suggesting that she has four more. The latter have passed when she expresses her parents the wish to become an actress. They oppose each other ; She stands up to them and enrolled in the dramatic school of Athens, where she learned from theater, singing and dance. She gets married at 17 and becomes Irene Papas.
In the 1950s, she first became known in her country. Then a dead city (1951), of Iliadis frixos, grants him a little notoriety in Italy, enough for filmmakers to want to entrust him with roles. She turns in the Infidels (1953), by Mario Monicelli and Steno, Théodora, Empress of Byzantium (1954), of Riccardo Freda, and, the same year, in Attila, scourge of God, Pietro Francisci. The United States then welcomed him for the filming in particular of the Law of La Prairie (1956), Western by Robert Wise.
Modern tragedian
But it was to her native country and to the Greek filmmaker Michael Cacyannis (1922-2011) that she owed her first consecration, thanks to her role as widow martyr in Zorba Le Greek (1964). The film also marks the beginning of a long collaboration which will lead Irene Papas at the top of the great performers of the Old Tragic repertoire. Sublime electre in the eponymous film (1962), and just as unforgettable Hélène in the Trojans (1971) or Clytemnestre in Iphigénie (1977), the actress embodies the figure of a modern tragedian, hieratic and without primer.
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