The Devastating Death Of Irene Papas

Irene Papas was born Irene Lelekou to Eleni Prevezanou and Stavros Lelekos, both teachers. According to Greek Gateway, Papas was interested in acting as a young girl but didn’t have a chance to indulge that passion until her family moved to Athens when she was 7 years old. She married director Alkis Papas when she was 21 but they were divorced after three years. 

Papas showed a broad array of talents in her nearly 70-year career. Aside from her long list of European and American film and television credits, she starred in numerous Greek stage tragedies and Broadway productions and also lent her voice to compositions by countryman Vangelis, who died in May 2022. She told NPR’s Morning Edition in 1984, “I never thought there was a difference between a dramatic actor and a comic actor. I think there are good actors and bad actors … I would love one day to play tragedy, and the next day to be a nightclub act. Why not?”

When legendary actor Marlon Brando died in 2004, Pappas told the Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera she had an extended secret affair with him that began in 1954. “I have never since loved a man as I loved Marlon,” she said, per the New York Post. “He was the great passion of my life, absolutely the man I cared about the most and also the one I esteemed most, two things that generally are difficult to reconcile.”