Aliki Vougiouklaki

Vougiouklaki was born in Marousi to Emmy Koumoundourou and Ioannis Vougiouklakis, a lawyer and the provincial governor of Arcadia in the Peloponnese during the war, who was executed by the resistance organisation ELAS. She had two brothers, Takis Vougiouklakis (film director) and Antonis (an architect). As a student, she participated in school plays, which eventually led her to an acting career. In 1952, she secretly auditioned for the National Theatre of Greece Drama School, passed the exams and started attending classes. She graduated three years later.

Her first theatrical role was in The Imaginary Invalid, Molière, in 1953, while her first movie, The Little Mouse, was in 1954. She appeared in movies, mostly musicals, television programs, and theatrical productions. She co-starred with Dimitris Papamichail in most of the movies and in a number of theatrical plays.

She received the prize for the lead woman's role at the inaugural Greek Cinema Festival in Thessaloniki in 1960 for her starring role in Madalena while the movie Ipolochagos Natassa (1970) was the biggest box office success in Greek Cinema.

In 1961 she established her own theatre company and presented successful theatrical plays. In 1962 she had a contract to star in Finos Films's English language film, Aliki, My love (also known as Aliki). It premiered in London and New York in June 1963, and in Athens in 1964. However, it didn't receive the expected success. The inability to be successful internationally was the reason she never attempted an "international movie star" career again.

She was popularly known in the press as the National Star of Greece—a term first used by the journalist Eleni Vlahou in 1959. Her last movie was "Nelly, The Spy" (Κατάσκοπος Νέλλη), in 1981. The decline of the Greek Cinema prompted her to concentrate on her theatrical career, acting and producing in 53 plays. In 1975 she staged large- scaled musicals which changed the usual Greek style of the theatrical musical.

In 2008, her son published a biography of Vougiouklaki, Eho Ena Mistiko (I Have A Secret), the title of a song she sang in Maiden's Cheek. That same year, a television series based on the book aired on the Alpha TV channel.

Vougiouklaki married her classmate of the National Theater Drama School and co-star, Dimitris Papamichail, on 18 January 1965. On 4 June 1969 she gave birth to their son, Yiannis Papamichail. The couple got divorced in 1975 due to "Irreconcilable Differences". In 1992, in an interview with Nikos Hadjinikolaou, Vougiouklaki revealed that she secretly married Giorgos Iliadis, a Greek Cypriot businessman, on 25 January 1982 in Athens. They had met in 1976. The couple divorced only a couple of months later, for personal reasons cited by Iliadis, which Vougiouklaki respected.