My Biography
JENNY KAREZI – EVGENIA KARPOUZI
Non profit website to honor her career and legacy.
The most loved play and cinema actress, Jenny Karezi, was born in Athens, in January 12th, 1936. Her real name was Evgenia Karpouzi. During her childhood, she lived in several Greek cities, following her parents who were teachers. In Thessaloniki she was registered in a French Nuns’ School as a boarder student and later she continued in the related Saint Joseph in Athens.
Her love for theater started arousing even since her school years and was expressed via her participation in many school performances. In 1951 –year of graduation from the Greek-French School– she played the leading part in Sophocles’ Antigone, held in REX by the graduates of the school.
In the same year she was accepted in the Drama School of the National Theater, where she studied next to Dimitris Rodiris, Aggelos Terzakis, Katerina and Yiorgo Pappa, who was her first big love indeed. Her first part in the theater was with Melina Merkouri and Vassilis Diamantopoulos, in the play Beautiful Helen, played in October 1954 in the Kotopouli Theater.
Many great parts were to follow, next to Alexis Minotis, Katina Paxinou (Ophelia in Hamlet, Kordelia in King Lear, Adela in the House of Bernanda Alba of Lorka, etc.)
Simultaneously in 1955, she had her cinema dιbut, in Bardy-Gardy, Poverty and Ethos, written by Alekos Sakellarios, to have more than 30 films to follow, such as the Miss’s Dupe (1960), the Bride run away (1962), The Red Lights (1963), Miss Director (1964), A Funny Funny Family (1965), Jenny-Jenny (1966) A Knight for Vasoula (1968), A Woman in the Resistance (1970).
She remained in the National Theater till 1959, taking parts in plays of Tolstoi, Adreyef, Ugo Bet and Aristophanes, with Mary Aroni. After 1960, she created her own personal theater companies and cooperated with brilliant comedians, such as Labros Konstantaras, Dinos Iliopoulos, Mimis Fotopoulos and Dionisis Papayiannopoulos.
From 1968 till her death she played with Costas Kazakos, plays of Kambanellis, Alby, Ibsen, Tsehof, Anagnostakis, while in 1985 she played for the first time ancient drama, with Midia, directed by Volanakis. This was a performance which met great success in Epidaurus. Her last theatrical performance was Diamonds and Blues of Loula Anagnostaki.
In her personal life she got married twice. Her first husband was Zachos Hatzifotiou in 1962 and her second with Costas Kazakos in 1967, with whom she remained married till the end of her life. She had a son with Costas Kazakos, called Konstantinos, who followed with success the steps of his parents and became an actor too.
Jenny Karezi died in July 27th, 1992, after a long fight with cancer. Her husband Costas Kazakos along with other persons of quality, established in the same year the foundation “Jenny Karezi” aiming at the comforting cure of people suffering of cancer and other long term diseases leading to death and their relief of pain in every means possible.
Apart from the foundation, an Athenian Theater is named after our great actress and a public cinema in Polichni in Thessaloniki is also named after her (Filippou and Dervenakion 1).
Texts translated from Greek, sources: http://www.sansimera.gr/biographies/28
and http://www.matia.gr/7/73/7307/7307_1_9.html