The French called him “the midwife” (L’accoucheur) for his ability to make actors “give birth” to their roles. Faye Dunaway wrote in her autobiography that he taught her “we never play the lines of a role, but what lies beneath them.” That boy who left Greece for London in 1951, carrying as his only “dowry” a monologue from Shakespeare’s Richard II taught to him by Karolos Koun, passed the entrance exams for the Old Vic Theatre School. Later, across the Atlantic, he was admitted to the Actors Studio—4th among 5,000 candidates. Actor, director, teacher. The man who taught Marilyn Monroe, Jane Fonda, James Dean, Marlon Brando, Warren Beatty, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, and many others. And, of course, the founder of Theatre des Cinquante – Atelier Andreas Voutsinas in Paris, shortly after the turbulent May ’68, gathering there the elite of French actors: Jeanne Moreau, Jean-Louis Trintignant, but also Fanny Ardant, Juliette Binoche, Isabelle Huppert, and countless others. And naturally, Greece: the National Theatre of Northern Greece, Melina Mercouri, Despo Diamantidou, Anna Galinea, Aliki Vougiouklaki, Zoe Laskari, as well as Katerina Didaskalou, Themis Bazaka, and Lydia Fotopoulou.

Thus, the tempestuous Andreas Voutsinas. The man who loved both men and women, and lived a powerful, youthful passion with Jane Fonda. The lights of his life went out on June 8, 2010. His ashes were scattered in Epidaurus. “I want to get into the nostrils of bad actors so they sneeze while performing,” he used to say.

On Monday, November 24, the exhibition “I, Andreas Voutsinas” opened at the Hellenic American Union, offering a historical look at his life and work. It is curated by archaeologist and art historian Iris Kritikou, actor and editor Stamatis Gkikas (Atelier Andreas Voutsinas), and visual artist Marios-Angelos Voutsinas, his son.

Father and Son

One cannot help but pause at the relationship between Andreas Voutsinas and Marios-Angelos Voutsinas—this turbulent father–son bond, not through a voyeuristic keyhole, but as a true story of acceptance and reconciliation. The child of the brief marriage between Andreas Voutsinas and Artemis Papastrati, Marios became the son of two bewildered twenty-year-olds suddenly faced with the responsibility of a baby. He eventually grew up with his maternal grandmother, and occasionally with his mother. He saw his father for the first time at age eleven. He crossed the threshold of the Actors Studio. When Andreas heard his son was there, he slipped out the back door. A week later he sent a telegram asking someone to bring the boy to his psychoanalyst’s office. There, father and son saw each other for the first time. They met again when Marios was nineteen. Their relationship weathered many storms. Before Andreas’ death, they spent seven years in silence. Only in his final months did they meet again.

This is where the thread picks up when I meet Iris Kritikou. “I’ll speak to you both as co-curator of the exhibition and as a close friend of Marios Voutsinas,” she clarifies. Their collaboration began in 2008 and quickly became very close. “So we’re in 2009. Marios is presenting, under my curation, the exhibition Tea at Mrs. Katakouzinos’ at the Angelos and Leto Katakouzinos House Museum. While the exhibition is running, he gets a phone call. It was Andreas. He had suffered a stroke and simply said, after so many years of silence: ‘If you want, come.’” Marios stayed with his father for six months until his death. “Though painful and difficult, I believe that time was absolutely necessary, fertile, and healing, allowing them to pick up the thread of their relationship from the beginning,” says Kritikou.

A Maniacal Collector

After Andreas Voutsinas’ death, Marios was confronted with thousands—and she literally means thousands—of his father’s belongings. “He found himself thrust into Andreas’ ‘warehouse,’ who was also a compulsive collector. He had to close the Paris apartment too. He stood before thousands of objects, notes, clothes, scribbles, antiques, books—everything you can imagine—raising the question: ‘What will become of all this?’ Some items were given away, some were transformed into artworks by Marios, and ten years after Andreas’ death, the idea of an exhibition was born. But the pandemic overshadowed everything.”

Now the moment has arrived. Kritikou suggested the Hellenic American Union as the venue. While speaking, she emphasizes the work of co-curator Stamatis Gkikas. “He undertook the enormous burden of organizing the archive. He opened the ‘beast’ and discovered, horrified, that Andreas threw away neither the precious nor the trivial. He would keep even the dry-cleaning receipt from New York.”

She highlights Voutsinas’ unique, insatiable collector’s passion. “Anything he loved, he bought repeatedly. How many Louis Vuitton suitcases, how many pens, how many caps—the Parisian house Gelot even created a cap model with the initials VTS in his honor—how many dog collars, how many watches…”

The Structure

The exhibition unfolds in two parts: his life and his work. In the Kennedy Gallery of the Hellenic American Union, visitors explore his life through personal documents, letters, collectibles, and 25 iconic portraits by artists such as Tsarouchis, Lila de Nobili, Fassianos, and Samios. A remarkable network of connections is also presented—including 50 international figures, from Lee Strasberg and Elia Kazan to Marilyn Monroe and Federico Fellini—who shared close ties with him.

The Hadjikyriakos-Ghikas Gallery focuses on his theatrical work, displaying sets, models, photographs, and programs from productions that shaped his career in Greece and abroad. More than 180 theatrical projects—from the Actors Studio and Theatre des Cinquante to the stages of Athens and Epidaurus—reveal Voutsinas as a teacher, director, and mentor to generations of actors. “The Hellenic Parliament contributed decisively to this effort,” Kritikou notes. “With their support, instead of a catalogue, we produced this collectible newspaper-monograph being offered. We hope the exhibition will continue in Thessaloniki and Paris. Afterward, the Andreas Voutsinas archive will be donated to Parliament. I should also mention that, inspired by this project, the Friends of Andreas Voutsinas Association was founded a year ago. I feel that all of this has given Marios—who resembles Andreas so much—the ideal way to finally reconcile with the myth and legacy of his father.”