Takis Spyridakis

Takis (Panagiotis) Spyridakis (Greek: Τάκης (Παναγιώτης) Σπυριδάκης, Aegina, 4 February 1958 - Athens, 14 September 2019) was a Greek film, theatre and television actor, director and screenwriter. Takis Spyridakis was born in Aegina and grew up in Piraeus, where he also went to school. He worked in various jobs from a young age (he went to night school). He often watched films, but without initially being oriented towards the acting profession. He studied at the Drama School of the National Theatre, which he abandoned shortly before the end. He has participated in 13 films while his directorial debut was in 1994 with the film The Garden of God, for which he also wrote the screenplay. The film was awarded 7 state quality awards at the Thessaloniki Film Festival. Spyridakis first appeared on the big screen playing one of the protagonists in the film Sweet Gang, directed by Nikos Nikolaidis (1983). For his performance, he won the special performance award at the Thessaloniki Film Festival that same year. His second participation was also noteworthy, in Nikos Perakis's Loufa and Variation (1984). This was followed by Morning Patrol (Nikos Nikolaidis, 1986), Family Protector (Nikos Perakis, 1997), This Night Stays (Nikos Panagiotopoulos, 1999), Black Milk (Nikos Triantafyllidis, 1999), No One Loses in Everything (Dionysis Grigoratos, 2000), Cheap Cigarettes (Renos Charalambidis, 2000), I'm Tired of Killing Your Loved Ones (Nikos Panagiotopoulos, 2002), Loofah and Disguise: Sirens in the Aegean (Nikos Perakis, 2005), Isovites (Theodoros Maragos, 2008) and 4 Black Suits (Renos Charalambidis, 2009). In 1989, Spyridakis wrote and directed the short film Vera Cruz, which won the 1st prize for best film at the corresponding Festival, was honored by the Ministry of Culture and was awarded by the National Film Center of France in 1990. For the last four years, he has starred in the theater, in the play "Agrios Sporos" by Yannis Tsiros, at the Epi Kolono theater, directed by Eleni Skoti. He also participated in commercials for a mobile phone company, in which he played the president of a football team.