Galery

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Zach Galifianakis, who is well known for his participation in the Hollywood trilogy “The Hangover”, is expected to soon arrive in Greece. The reason for his journey is not just to visit the homeland of his family. He will shoot a film about the historical event that is known as "the battle of Crete."

Galifianakis has become known for his role of Alan - one of the most comical characters in the three parts of “The Hangover” and he has greatly been identified with the crazy and illogically behaving member of the company. However, during the press conference which WarnerBros film company organized in London a few days ago, Zach showed a completely different character. According to an article in Ethnos newspaper, the actor looked very calm, slightly tired from travelling to promote the film, but ready to answer all questions, including the most unexpected ones such as whether he could actually drink that large amounts of alcohol, whether he knew that hot Finnish sauna could treat severe hangover or whether he himself watered his garden on Sundays. Zack answered all the questions adding a comic touch to each answer.

 
Replying to a journalist of Ethnos newspaper, who asked him if he strived to add some features of Greek culture to his roles, Galifianakis answer was "no".

"But I am working on a project to make a film in Greece very soon, within the next two years," says the actor. Here comes the surprise: "The script is not yet ready, but I can say that it is not a comedy, it is something entirely different: this will be an epic war film about the events related to the battle of Crete". This is the well-known and codenamed "Operation Mercury" - Germany's biggest air - landing operation during World War II, which aimed at destroying the British military contingent and establishing full control over Crete and the Eastern Mediterranean.

Galifianakis gave no further information about the project, which is in the very early stages of its development. It is not yet clear whether he will speak Greek in the film. "I need to very well refresh my knowledge of Greek. If we can realize the film, for which a relative of mine is making efforts too, I would have to sleep with my textbooks. Unless my only lines are, "where is the bathroom" or "where is my toothpick" says Zack and laughs.

Unlike Nia Vardalos (writer and main character in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" – author’s note), who focuses on the funny and picturesque Greek folklore, Zach Galifianakis builds his Hollywood career by combining the American and Mediterranean temperament. He says that he has not particularly considered the decision of keeping his long and tangled Greek surname, although most of his colleagues prefer to change theirs for the sake of their careers. "It did not take me long to make my decision. They offered me to change it but I did not realize why I should do something like that. My father would be very angry. I did not want to change it. Perhaps, I would have changed my first name to Sheila, for example," Zach is joking and starting telling a bunch of names, changing the subject of the conversation.

In the third part of “The Hangover”, the famous crazy company gathers to say goodbye to the audience with an adventure that ends where it all began four years ago - in Las Vegas. In response to the question of whether the trilogy makes the male company topical in the very competitive 21st century rather than the madness, that is typical for each of us to a lesser or greater degree, Galifianakis says,

"There were original characters in the film with whom the viewers could identify themselves," he says in connection with the first part of the film, which had unexpected commercial success. "I think that some people have a strange side that sometimes comes to the surface. Others have a more moderate and reasonable side that changes everything, while there is a third group of people, who are more nervous and prone to influences. That is why so many people saw themselves in the roles."

In the final part of the trilogy, the irreparable and immature Zack goes to the opposite shore, he is the last among his friends, even though there is no bachelor party, no hangover this time. What could turn things upside down again? It is the four friends’ unsettled accounts with gangsters from their dirty past that are enough to easily throw them again into the swamp of sin.

Zach Galifianakis was born in the quiet town of Wilkesboro in North Carolina in October 1969. He is neither a typical American nor a typical second-generation Greek. His mother is of Scottish descent, and his father is Greek. Harris Galifianakis was an oil merchant and he is the son of Cretans, who had emigrated to the U.S. Zack was baptized in an Orthodox Church and raised without any particular relations and interactions with large Greek communities in the U.S.

He likes a lot the Greek tables piled with dishes as well as his ancestors’ home island, namely Crete, and remembers the smell of garlic after the family lunches on Sundays. Zack had initially enrolled to study at the Faculty of Communications at the local university but did not graduate from it. Instead, he decided to develop his acting talent in New York - at first, in the back room of a restaurant for hamburgers and later, in various cafés in the American metropolis.

Somehow, his idol was his first cousin Nicholas Galifianakis - cartoonist in the "Washington Post" newspaper. His most famous relative, Nick Galifianakis, was a member of the Democratic Party of North Carolina from 1967 to 1973. The place he loves the most is the mountain farm where he grew up.