Karyofyllia Karabeti

Karyofyllia Karabeti, also written Karampeti or Karambeti, was born in 1958 and grew up in Doxa, a village near Didymoteicho in Evros, in the far north-east of Greece; some reference works give 5 July 1958 as her birthday. In Thessaloniki she studied civil engineering at the Polytechnic while she was also training at the Drama School of the State Theatre of Northern Greece. There, she says, the actor Maya Lymperopoulou was a decisive teacher. From the age of 21 she supported herself by teaching mathematics, babysitting and working as a waitress in bars.

Her first years on stage were unpaid, at the Experimental Stage of the Τέχνη (Art) company in Thessaloniki, so she worked elsewhere at the same time. She then joined Giorgos Michailidis at the Ανοιχτό Θέατρο (Open Theatre), where she played Annabella in ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, Wedekind’s Lulu and Masha in Chekhov’s Three Sisters. She remembers it as one of the most beautiful periods of her life.

In 1997 the National Theatre of Greece cast her as Euripides’ Medea, directed by Nikaiti Kontouri with music by Savina Yannatou. After Epidaurus the production toured abroad, to Melbourne, Montreal and New York among other cities. Since then she has moved between ancient tragedy, modern drama, television and film.

Karabeti is known above all as a tragic actor. Among the parts she values most she names Antigone, which she links to the memory of the director Minos Volanakis, Medea, several Electras and Clytemnestras, especially the Clytemnestra she learned from Peter Stein, Lady Macbeth and even Hamlet. With Michail Marmarinos she played Megara in Euripides’ Heracles Mad, and for Yannis Houvardas she was Christine Mannon in Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra.

Modern Greek drama has given her some of her strangest roles. In 2015 she played Norma Desmond, the forgotten silent-film star, in Dimitris Dimitriadis’ Στροχάιμ (Strochaim), directed by Stamatis Fasoulis. In 2017 she was Atossa, the Persian queen, in Aeschylus’ Persians by the Cyprus Theatre Organisation, directed by Aris Biniaris at Epidaurus. For this role she received the Karolos Koun award for ancient drama, presented in Athens in February 2019.

On screen she played the lyricist Eftychia Papagiannopoulou in her later years in Angelos Frantzis’ film Ευτυχία (Eftychia, 2019), with Katia Goulioni as the younger Eftychia. In 2023 she led Eva Nathena’s Φόνισσα (The Murderess), based on Alexandros Papadiamantis’ novella about Hadoula, an old widow on a Greek island around 1900. Her method, she says, is work alone: concentration, notes in rehearsal and study of every movement and every phrase.

The National Theatre’s digital archive keeps photographs, programmes and press cuttings of her 1997 Medea, including a picture of her as Medea beside Lazaros Georgakopoulos as Jason. Her recent films brought two Greek women of words to a wide audience: a writer of popular song lyrics and the heroine of a classic of Greek prose. In 2026 she returned to Medea, 29 years later, in a production directed by Nikita Milivojević.

Try this: read her Modern Greek sentence from a 2015 interview in Το Βήμα, «Ο ηθοποιός γίνεται το όχημα για να συμβεί αυτό» (The actor becomes the vehicle for this to happen). Then write two sentences of your own: one about the actor, starting Η Καραμπέτη λέει ότι… (Karabeti says that…), and one about a character, starting Η Μήδεια αποφασίζει να… (Medea decides to…). Check that each sentence makes clear who is speaking or acting.

• She studied civil engineering at the Polytechnic of Thessaloniki at the same time as drama.
• The 1997 Medea had music by Savina Yannatou, played on instruments that included the Pontic lyra and the folk clarinet.
• She has played both Electra and Clytemnestra, the daughter and the mother who face each other in the same myth.
• In Strochaim she played a silent-film star: a screen actor portrayed on stage.