Nia Vardalos

Born in Winnipeg, a town in Canada, on September 24, 1962, Antonia Eugenia Vardalos does indeed come from a Greek family very similar to the one in the film. So important were her relatives to them that they named her with both of her names in honor of her two grandmothers.

His father was a small businessman, who, among other businesses, ran a restaurant. As a child she had a certain complex because her classmates laughed at her for being a chubby girl. She never considered acting, but when she was twenty-four she ended up working as a box office manager at the Second City Theater in Toronto. One day, one of the leading actresses fell ill, and the show was going to be cancelled. As the spontaneous of the bulls, she appeared before the producers of the work, asking them for a chance and assured them that she knew the text by heart. They decided to let her prove her worth and she, as she passed the test, was offered a permanent position in the company, first in Toronto, and shortly after in Chicago.

There she fell in love with another of the actors, Ian Gómez, a New Yorker of Puerto Rican origin, known in Spain for his role as Javier in the seriesFelicity , and that inmy big greek weddingHe plays the role of the groom’s best friend. Since he was not Greek, Nia’s family was initially reticent about the relationship. “It’s funny, because they spend your whole life encouraging you to get married, and when you fall in love with someone who is not Greek, on top of that you have to endure the fury of the family and they warn you not to even think about marrying him,” he explains. the actress. The relatives overcame their initial reluctance when the groom agreed to be baptized by the Orthodox rite, an essential requirement in this confession to be able to get married. Although Nia Vardalos keeps fond memories of her first year of marriage, the truth is that the marriage went through a rough patch. Both spouses decided to leave their theater company to try their luck in the cinema in Los Angeles, although it was very difficult for them to make their way. “We didn’t stop arguing. And on top of that, the situation worsened because we committed the idiocy of quitting smoking at the same time and we were nervous all day”, he recalls. She went to a multitude ofcastings , but they did not give him a job due to his lack of experience, until he found a role in a short titled precisely No Experience Needed , which had little impact, but at least it provided him with material to take to the tests and show how it would look on screen .

Thanks to that, she got a supporting role in Men Seeking Women , a comedy about three frivolous friends in their thirties who bet that they can maintain a relationship for three months. The few who saw it define it as disappointing, and in Spain it was not even released. Even worse is her next job,The fantastic team , television continuation ofThe fantastic car that completely failed. Years after Michael Knight, the original protagonist, fought against crime, the organization that hired him, known as the Foundation, replaces him with five new drivers of as many cars equipped with the latest technology. Well, Nia Vardalos was the voice of one of the vehicles. She then appeared briefly in Meet Prince Charming , a romantic comedy starring Tia Carrere , apparently of higher quality and with a certain freshness, but which did not attract too many viewers’ attention either.

With so little success, his economic situation was quite precarious, which awakened his capacity for initiative. She decided to put on a show in a small venue, a monologue in which she told her own story, her relationship with her peculiar family, and what it cost them to accept that she married a “xeno” ( Foreign). The audience tuned in to her sense of humor, and she got word of mouth that it was a hilarious show. This circumstance caught the attention of another actress of Greek origin, Rita Wilson , who laughed out loud when she identified one hundred percent with the story, because her husband, Tom Hanks , is not Greek either. Shortly after, the very protagonist ofForrest Gump went to see the show with his daughter. “I thought he wanted to meet me, but at the end of the performance he was not there. Shortly after, I received a letter asking for forgiveness because she had to leave early, since her daughter had school the next day”.

Encouraged by the Hanks-Wilson couple, Nia Vardalos transformed the work into a film script, which, according to her own admission, she believed was too cheap due to her lack of experience in the field of writing. Even so, Rita Wilson liked it so much that she decided to buy it from him and produce My Big Fat Greek Wedding , which against all odds became number one in the box office. According to some analysts, the ratio between its low budget and its income makes it the most profitable film in history, even aboveThe Blair Witch Project .

She is currently aware that it will be difficult for her to overcome being associated with the character in this film. Although various production companies offered to finance a sequel, she opted to continue the story in a thirty-minute episode sitcom for CBS. However, My Great Greek Life has not had much acceptance, according to some chroniclers because it included too many characters, which made it difficult to follow the plot. In the near future, she hopes to continue succeeding in the cinema, and on December 11 she signed a contract with Universal, which will produce her next film, Connie and Carla , also written and starring her. At the moment, it is only known that the cast will include Toni Collette (Muriel’s wedding ,The sixth sense ).