Athina Maximou

Thessaloniki, and a surname taken from her father

Athina Maximou was born in Thessaloniki in 1975 and trained at the drama school of the State Theatre of Northern Greece. Alongside the acting course she took three years of voice and classical singing lessons and six years of classical and modern dance — a background that shows in how physically she plays comedy. Her family surname is Tsamkosidou, earlier Tsamkosoglou; the professional name Maximou comes from her father, Maximos.

Her early stage work put her in the two state houses and the regional circuit, in productions by directors including Vasilis Papavasileiou and Giannis Iordanidis, at the National Theatre and at the State Theatre of Northern Greece. The classical credits include Shakespeare — As You Like It, and an Othello staged at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus in 2006. That grounding in large open-air rooms is relevant to what she does now, because almost everything she has played in the past two seasons has been in venues of two or three hundred seats, where the same voice has to be scaled down rather than pushed.

The film prize came first

The recognition arrived from cinema before the theatre had settled. For Nikos Panagiotopoulos's This Night Remains she won the award for leading female role at the Greek State Quality Awards at the Thessaloniki festival in 2000, at 25. In 2002 European Film Promotion named her one of its Shooting Stars, the annual selection of European screen actors presented at the Berlinale.

Two more Panagiotopoulos films followed in quick succession — Beautiful People in 2001 and I Got Tired of Killing Your Lovers in 2002 — and then The Secret of November, directed by Takis Papagiannidis, in 2003. Television came later and more sparsely. In July 2023 it was reported that she and Chilakis, married since 2006 and frequent stage partners, would work together on screen for the first time in the SKAI drama Oi Pantheoi.

The pattern of the career since is unusual for a Greek actor of her generation: the film prize did not pull her towards screen work. The bulk of the output, and all of the current output, is stage.

The Dounias company

Most of Maximou's recent work has come through a small, repeating group: director Manolis Dounias, Chilakis as co-director and co-lead, and a rotating third or fourth actor. The clearest example was #Cancel, David Ireland's black comedy, which Dounias both translated and directed at the Theatro Athinon from 2 October 2025. It is a three-hander — an English director, an Oscar-winning American actor and a Northern Irish writer, thrown together on a production that comes apart over questions of who is allowed to say what. Maximou played the writer, Ruth.

The piece runs 110 minutes without an interval and was well received. The critic at Imerologio Theatrou, reviewing on 31 October 2025 a performance seen on 8 October, gave it four stars and singled out Maximou for playing Ruth with what the review called torrential spontaneity, describing her as the element that knocks the balance between the other two off its axis. Athinorama rated the production three and a half out of five. Set design was by Dimitris Polychroniadis, costumes by Eleni Skoula, lighting by Alekos Anastasiou.

A kitsch bedroom on the Lambeti roof

The summer of 2026 was given over to Takounia ston valto — High Heels in the Swamp — a new pop political comedy by Akis Dimou, staged on the Taratsa, the rooftop stage of the Lambeti Theatre on Leoforos Alexandras. It opened on 2 June 2026, directed by Dounias and Chilakis, with Maximou, Marianna Toumasatou, Alekos Syssovitis and Dimitris Filippidis completing a cast of five. The play sets an anniversary reception in motion, everyone waiting for the prime minister to arrive, and lets the private and public dirty laundry surface while they wait.

Maximou played the minister's wife: snobbish, unpredictable and fixated on her shoes. Tonia Karaoglou, reviewing for Athinorama on 18 June 2026, called the production a light political comedy with farcical elements, aimed at mindsets rather than named individuals — corruption, blackmail, power games — and noted that the evening takes a while to find its rhythm before the comic machinery starts to bite. The Documento review, published 24 June 2026, was warmer about Maximou specifically, arguing that she manages to charge a deliberately schematic part with the qualities of a complete character, and that the restraint is what makes the narcissism believable.

Maria Filippou's set was a bedroom built close to kitsch out of cheap materials, with costumes by Alexia Theodoraki, musical interludes by Kostas Nikolopoulos and lighting by Nikos Sotiropoulos. The run was 105 minutes, Sunday to Wednesday at 9pm, tickets from €18. Athinorama announced the show's return on 21 August 2026; the final performance was listed for 23 September 2026.

October 2026: the Dorfman

The next job is a sharp turn. On 9 October 2026 Maximou opens in Ariel Dorfman's Death and the Maiden at the Theatro Athinon on Vourkourestiou, again directed by Dounias and Chilakis, in a translation by Christos Karchadakis. It is a three-hander: Chilakis, Maximou and Antonis Myriangos. Athanasia Smaragdi designed the set, Ioanna Timotheadou the costumes, Dimitris Kamarotos wrote original music.

Dorfman wrote the play in 1990. It won the Olivier for best new play in 1992, was staged on Broadway with Glenn Close, Gene Hackman and Richard Dreyfuss, and filmed by Roman Polanski. The setup is a house in an isolated place, in a country where democracy has just been restored; a woman and her husband are trying to rebuild a life on top of a traumatic past, and a stranger arrives. Maximou takes the woman.

It is the third consecutive production built by the same core team in two years, and the first of the three that is not a comedy. The two comedies gave her exaggeration to work with — Ruth as the disruptive element, the minister's wife as a running gag about footwear. Dorfman gives her the opposite problem: one room, no release, and a character whose credibility depends on the audience not being sure how much of what she says is true.

Where the standing sits

Maximou is not a touring name and does not lead a company of her own. What she has is a steady position inside one of the more productive small operations in Athens theatre, with two Athens venues in rotation — the Theatro Athinon in winter, the Lambeti rooftop in summer — and a repertoire that alternates imported contemporary comedy with new Greek writing and, now, a modern classic.

The reviews across 2025 and 2026 are consistent about the same thing: she is used as the destabilising presence in an ensemble, and reviewers credit her with finding a real person inside parts that are written as types. Beyond the stage, she has given a run of press interviews through 2026 — including a May 2026 television appearance with Chilakis and a June 2026 magazine interview — in which she spoke about a difficult adoption process and about not becoming a mother.