Vangelis Mourikis

Vangelis Mourikis (; b. 1963) is a Greek film actor.

Early life Βοrn in Athens, Greece, in 1963, Mourikis found himself at a very young age in Australia, a place where some of his family's members had emigrated in decades past, working in various jobs and, as an adolescent, taking up at some point acting lessons; he appeared in theatrical plays staged by Greek expats. Mourikis made his Greek television debut in Thodoros Maragos "Emmones Idees" alongside Angelique Rockas

He made his film debut in the 1982 production Running On Empty, "a pretty silly but finally likeable and good humoured Aussie car flick," as the Filmnews review described it, which noted the "personable" onscreen presence of Mourikis in a "more-ethnic-than-thou performance."

Career Returning to Greece, he became known with his role in The truants, a 1996 movie featuring an ensemble of six young actors as old school friends who reunite every summer at the place where they grew up; they all shared the Best Supporting Actor award at the 27th Thessaloniki Film Festival.

In 2002, he was the lead in The King as the ex-convict who returns to his hometown and tries to fit in, in a performance said to be a "tour de force."

His performances in Rakushka (2004) and The Wake (2005) won him the Best Supporting Actor and Best Actor awards respectively at the Thessaloniki Film Festival.

For Georgis Grigorakis' 2020 Digger, winner of the 70th Berlin International Film Festival's CICAE award and other festival pizes, Mourikis was the farmer protagonist whose life is disturbed by a mining company's intrusion. He won the Best Actor award in the 26th Sarajevo Film Festival.

The 2024 fantasy drama Arcadia, described by a reviewer as a "dreamy, at times absurd fantasy, an aching, downbeat tale about loss and lingering grief," and by another as an "ambitiously spun script, the depth of which ultimately doesn’t live up to the superfluously complicated fable," featured Mourikis and Lanthimos regular Angeliki Papoulia as a couple heading off to a resort, whose "strongly internalized" performances were said to offer "a clean, restrained picture of grief."

Selected filmography

Awards