He was among the most charming leading men of his generation. Tall, with chestnut curly hair and wonderful blue eyes. The course of life and artistic prominence of Alberto Eskenazy, who passed away yesterday at the age of 73 after a battle with cancer, however, followed a somewhat unconventional path, defined by a lifelong insistence on a series of unexpected personal choices. Unlike others, he never used his beauty to advance his career, never chased fame, and said many big “no’s” to important proposals, consciously choosing to put family above career.

These deep personal values that guided him throughout his life, together with his enduring kindness and his choice to exist in the artistic world quietly and discreetly—sometimes as an actor, sometimes as a director, and sometimes as a writer—were what made him a special case as both an artist and a human being.

Born and raised in Thessaloniki within a poor but loving Jewish family, he experienced racism early on because of his origin and his unusual name, which revealed it:
“I grew up in a poor neighborhood of Thessaloniki where we played with the other kids without any problem because I had a different name. The children didn’t have an issue, unlike some adults, who may have been collaborators with the Germans and looked at us askance. As I grew up, of course, I began to understand that this difference might bother some people. I’m talking about my early years. Antisemitism is a disease, an incurable cancer, right? Let’s not kid ourselves. At best, we call it prejudice. I don’t know whether in the future, from generation to generation, all this will be eliminated—it’s absurd! To define another human being for no reason!” he had said pointedly in an interview with Pandora’s Box and Antonis Boskoitis.

He was always proud of his parents, who fell in love after the Civil War and, despite their poverty, managed to build a beautiful family, first bringing a baby girl into the world and five years later him. The family may not have had money, but it did have a dynamic, open-minded mother and a cultivated, multilingual father with a lifelong love of reading—a “treasure” that his son would discover many years later through theater.

The family’s battle with cancer

Sadly, this remarkable father passed away prematurely when his son was just 15 years old. His death was due to cancer, a disease that decades later would prove fatal to both his daughter and his son:
“At fifteen I lost my father to cancer on my birthday. And my sister died of cancer at sixty. It was extremely painful because she suffered terribly. A person should not be humiliated, should not collapse and drag others down with them,” the actor said emotionally in 2022 on the program Studio 4. That is why he himself did everything he could to face his illness quietly and upright, active and proud, for as long as his strength allowed.

An actor by chance

After school he attended Efkleidis, an electronics school in Thessaloniki, to learn a trade and secure a livelihood. It was then that he learned from friends that director Spyros Evangelatos was looking for extras for a production at the National Theatre of Northern Greece. He put on a suit, went to the audition, and the next day was informed that he had been chosen—and suddenly found himself touring Greece with the troupe, discovering a different world that fascinated him.

Thus he decided to leave for the capital and study acting. At 21 he took a small suitcase and hitchhiked down the National Road toward Athens. A truck stopped and picked him up, but during the journey it broke down in the middle of the night…

He made it, however, and reached his destination. He was not the type to be discouraged by obstacles. He took the exams for the National Theatre, passed, completed his studies in 1979, and immediately found work with the Karezi–Kazakos troupe, participating for the next three years in important productions alongside major protagonists.

Although he had all the qualifications, he did not want to remain on the big theatrical stages competing for leading roles. Yet he never abandoned theater, which he loved deeply and essentially. From 2001 onward he charted his own path through The Theatre of the Mediterranean, which he founded himself, staging numerous works, many of them written by him as he also devoted himself intensively to writing. Among them were There Is No Role for You (2025), Stella Violanti (2024), Thunderbolt (2023), Collector of Angels (2022), The Old Man of the Morea (2021), Ploutos (2019).

Alongside his theatrical group, in 2007 he also established a drama school, which he was forced to close in 2011 due to financial difficulties.

The legendary series of State Television

The beginning of Alberto Eskenazy’s career coincided with the flowering of State Television and the first successful series, in several of which he had the fortune to participate. It began in 1978 with the police anthology series Exit of Danger. In 1979 he appeared in The Notary alongside the great Vasilis Diamantopoulos, followed in 1980 by The Drunken State.

The series with which he became fully identified and which launched his career, however, was the legendary Light of Dawn, where he starred alongside Koralia Karanti. Older viewers will not forget that February night in 1981 when, during the broadcast of an episode, one of the strongest earthquakes ever to hit Greece struck, sending all of Athens’ residents terrified into the streets.

Television was the field in which Alberto Eskenazy worked most extensively. Over the decades we saw him in many series, both public and private, including Morals Squad, Bloodied Soils, Good Morning, Life, Angeliki, For a Place in the Sun, Postcard, IQ 160, among others.

He did not do much cinema work, deliberately, as he himself confessed:
“I’ve done very little cinema. There my appearance worked against me, because those who called me for films— I won’t name names—wanted me naked. I said no, and in the end it didn’t work out well for me, considering that I’ve only done five or six feature films. With Thomopoulos, with Grigoratos, and with some others… Dressed, though. Because if I had acted naked, I would have made thirty films.”

Demystifying beauty and devotion to family

In a strange way, Alberto Eskenazy never tried to cash in on his undeniable beauty. He never let it go to his head in his youth, as one might expect. On the contrary, at times he considered beauty an obstacle to what he truly wanted to do:
“Fortunately, I didn’t see myself in the mirror; otherwise I would have ruined my life. I don’t know what others see—the point is what you see. Yourself is yourself, and what others see is what they want to see. I looked at myself and wondered why everyone was fussing over me… and that’s how I was saved. Back then I didn’t have much experience or knowledge; I had an unbridled imagination. I was a fighter in life; I didn’t care that I was handsome. I was embarrassed when I saw myself in magazines,” he said in 2022 in an interview with ERT.

Thus, at just 28 years old, at a time when women everywhere swooned at his passing and his photos adorned magazine covers, he decided to marry 19-year-old Mary, in whom he found love, affection, companionship, and the mother of his children. They bound their lives together, had two wonderful children, Leon and Sara, and journeyed together, inseparable through time, until his final breath, which he took in the early hours of Monday at the Agioi Anargyroi Oncology Hospital.

“I wanted to have a family; I wanted children. The secret of family is love,” he used to say meaningfully. And this love he gave generously and also received within his family, which he always regarded as his top priority and the greatest success of his life.