Georgia Vasileiadou

Georgia Vasileiadou (Greek: Γεωργία Βασιλειάδου; 1897 – 12 February 1980) was a Greek actress. She appeared in more than forty films from 1930 to 1977. She was born in Athens in the Kypseli area in 1897 into a family of ten children. Her real name was Georgia Athanasiou, but she changed it to Vasiliadou when she decided to pursue singing and acting.

She was forced to leave school early to work in a shop and help support her large family, after the sudden death of her father, who was a cavalry officer, after falling from a horse. She made her first artistic appearance in 1923 as a member of the Olympia Theater chorus, in Giuseppe Verdi's Ernani, rather coincidentally when she began her studies at the Gennadius School in 1923 and then appeared in various operas.

She worked in major theater groups of the time with Kyveli, Marika Kotopouli, Dimitris Myrat, performing various roles. In the mid-1930s, she decided to stop, after a marriage that was unfortunate. She then met Sofia Vembo, who promised to help her. The man who discovered her and gave her the opportunity to have a great career was Alekos Sakellarios, so at the age of forty-two, Georgia Vassiliadou made a new dynamic start and with her innate talent immediately conquered the audience.

Alekos Sakellarios offered her a role in 1939 in The Married Girls, which became the occasion for the beginning of a second, but better known career - this time as a world-loving comedian, the "most beautiful ugly" of Greek cinema, as she was described. Her company Finos Film produced her great successes such as: The Beauty of Athens, The Aunt from Chicago, Clearchos, Marina and the Shorty and many others.

She took part in the television series Christ is Crucified Again. In the collections When Actors Sing 1 & 2, Vasiliadou can be heard in the songs "O kyr-Mentios" by Takis Morakis from the film The Treasure of the Retired and "Apokriatiko Gaitanaki". She lived in Maroussi and had a daughter, Fotini Apostolidou, from her first marriage, while in 1945 she married her second husband, Kostas Gambaros, with whom she lived together until her death.

In recent times, she suffered from bronchial asthma. Her health deteriorated and she was hospitalized at Evangelismos. She died on 12 February 1980. She was buried two days later, in the presence of a small crowd, at the 1st Cemetery of Athens. (Source: Wikipedia)