Koralia Karantis: “I get courted by a lot of young men and that scares me. I see in their eyes that…”

Guest at Studio 4 was Koralia Karantis who stars in Famagusta. In fact, because the filming is taking place in Cyprus, the actress jokingly said that “My second job is flight attendant at the moment, I make 5-6 trips a week”.

“I don’t want to complain about work at all, I just want what I do to be important. I have been out of work and by choice and not by my own choice. Like during the pandemic. As we women get older, we have fewer opportunities.”

Koralia Karanti also mentioned her godmother, the great Elli Lampeti.

“I admired my godmother but she died too early and I didn’t get to see her in her old age. I was 23 when he died. She was not very close to me because she was also ill for 14 years but she was not a classic type of godmother. I didn’t want anything, I was very happy to have her as a godmother. He was one and only.”

“I thought it was inelegant to say my age. Now…”

“Sometimes you may be hurt by some things, but moving forward you become steeled, that’s a gift that comes with age, because you philosophize about it. I used to think it was inelegant to say my age. I didn’t hide it, but sometimes I considered it rude to say it in public. Now I feel like saying it to help some people out. I had a tendency to hang out with older people. Those were other times. There was not so much attachment to the external image. We weren’t so concerned with age.”

“My parents used to tell me that I don’t have the character for theater. When I entered this job I was very innocent, very naive. I was a person who spoke his mind, didn’t embellish. I shouldn’t have had these. It ended up in problems. I wasn’t very flexible in my relationships.

I always believe that people have the best intentions. I believe in the goodness of people as Tennessee Williams said.”

“I feel happy about the life I’ve had. I fell in love, I was in love, I had intense relationships, I had a child.

I’ve been cheated on a few times in my life, that’s okay. It’s what you suspect but because you don’t want to get poisoned, you let it happen. When someone doesn’t honor your trust, it’s not your problem. I always blamed myself, I’m a guilty person. It’s my stuff. I think it’s a childhood thing. I have explained them. It’s what we’ve said, I was a lonely kid growing up with big people around but I wasn’t a pampered kid.”

“When my son was born he was the first and last thing in my life. When you have a child you have to go through this process. Let’s leave the parenting part, for everything else, when I decided to do something I had to do it as best as I could, otherwise I didn’t undertake it. But I am not one of those people who discipline without processing it.

At this time in my life what I care about is interacting with people. To listen to them and forget myself. I want to get out of these pieces of ego that we carry from our youth. It’s a different way to move forward.”

“My role in Famagusta was vivere pericolasmente”

“I had to be a giving woman and do consistently with what she deals with. Because I was a child who had a critical streak it may have been instilled in me growing up. I have a very strong value system that has been passed down to me, of being a good person not of perfection. There is something heartless, lifeless about perfection.

My grandmother was very immersed in her own personal drama. She was the woman I had in mind when I was trying to compose the role of Christina in Famagusta.”

Speaking about Famagusta and its role he said:

“Inside, I messed up a bit because Christina is a role with extreme emotional moments. It’s a double-edged sword these kinds of scenes.

It’s a bit vivere pericolasmente but it’s a very interesting role that hit me in the heart because Christina may be a Cypriot woman but she reminded me a lot of things from my family. It was also an excellent script.

We had never met again with Giannis Bezos. Do we know each other. It’s a magical thing, from the first moment it was as if I had played with him many times before, I felt him very close to me and so did he.”

“I believed that Giorgos Lianis would play the role of a mentor for my son”

The actress has a son from her marriage with Tzonis Kalimeris while she also had a second marriage with Giorgos Lianis.

As she said she asks her son’s opinion and his answer is always very good. “When he was younger, at some shows he was scared because I might be slapping him and he couldn’t understand. I am a mom who sets boundaries because I had read a lot of books. I could do it. My starting point was not to pass on to the child what I experienced. When he was in his teens and he was going on trips, I had resisted and he brought us into conflict, I had enlisted his father and he took my side. Then I wondered if I was overdoing it. Being a Pontian I insisted. The time came and the little one told me that I was right,” he said.

“I completely consciously stopped working from pregnancy until my son was 2.5 years old. The first time I tried to quit, I woke up every morning with a terrible stomach ache and then realized it was from withdrawal. When he left for studies, I also left and went to Thessaloniki. I had empty nest syndrome.

“In my personal life I had already chosen to be alone. It was a choice in the sense that as you get older you don’t fall in love easily. You know very well when you see the other person how they are inside and what adventures you will get into if you give in. I can’t be with someone conventionally if it’s not intense. I can’t be someone to be with someone. I am bored.

It was excitement with Giorgos Lianis, he had fascinated me and Giorgos was a man who when he wants to conquer someone there is no way he won’t succeed. I also secretly hoped that he would play a mentor role for my son because he is a very educated man. I was confirmed to a certain extent because Giorgos (Lianis) was a flying bird, it was not exactly what I expected.”

“I don’t know how likely I am to fall in love at 64”

“I am a 64-year-old woman. I don’t know how likely I am to fall in love at my age. I get courted by a lot of young men and it scares me a lot. I see in their gaze something that is completely available and deep and I am frightened. I say my Virgin Mary! The differences are huge. Many times they are my son’s age!

I’m not a taboo person, I give the impression that I’m a com ilpho but I’m not. I find it very legitimate for an older woman to be in a relationship with a younger man. It hasn’t happened to me. I was falling in love with older men, probably because of my dad.”