Katina Paxinou(1900-1973)
- Actress
Katina Paxinou was born in 1900, in Piraeus, Greece. She first appeared
on stage in 1928, in an Athens production of
Henry Bataille's "La femme nue". In the
early
1930's she was one of the founding members of the National Theatre of Greece (previously named Royal Theatre) and performed
several major roles in Sophocles'
"Electra", Henrik Ibsen's "Ghosts" etc,
often co-starring with her husband,
Alexis Minotis. The outbreak of the
Second World War found her in UK; she later managed to arrive at the
US, where she was offered her first film role in 1943 in
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943).
For her superb portrayal of the Spanish revolutionary Pilar in this
classic film adaptation of
Ernest Hemingway's novel, she won a
Best Supporting Actress Academy Award and a Golden Globe in 1944. She
made a few more Hollywood movies, before returning to Greece in the
early
1950's. During 1950 - 1971, some of her great performances were as Jocasta in Sophocles's
"Oedipus Rex" (1951, 1952, 1955 and 1958, also staged at that time on
Broadway with enormous success), as Countess Rosmarin Ostenburg in
Christopher Fry's "The Dark Is
Light Enough" (1957), as Clara Zachanassian in
Friedrich Dürrenmatt's "The Visit"
(1961), as Mary Tyrone in
Eugene O'Neill's "Long Day's
Journey Into Night" (1965) and in the title roles of
Euripides' "Hecuba" (1955) and
Bertolt Brecht's "Mother Courage" (1971).
She also starred in some other movies; she was particularly touching as
the Italian matriarch in the
Luchino Visconti masterpiece
Rocco e i suoi fratelli (1960).
She died of cancer in 1973 and is justly considered as the greatest
Greek actress of the 20th century.
