Stelios Yiakmis

Since making his screen debut on TV special Options in 1990, part Greek, part Kiwi actor Stelios Yiakmis has been seen onscreen on both sides of the Tasman. 

Yiakmis graduated from drama school Toi Whakaari in 1991, after completing  a Bachelor of Arts at Otago University. By then he had already won a few small screen roles for Wellington company Gibson Group. Among them was his television debut as part of the young cast of one-off special Options, made as part of a Ministry of Education campaign to help teenagers into jobs. 

His big break came in 1994, when he moved to Auckland to join the cast of Shortland Street. Over five action-packed years as hunky doctor Johnny Marinovich, he romanced Ellen (Robyn Malcolm) and got Jenny (Maggie Harper) pregnant, was falsely accused of sexual abuse, then in 1998 became a widowed solo father when his new wife (Alison James) died after a failed attempt to save someone else's life. 

Yiakmis went on to act in short-lived Hercules spin-off Young Hercules (playing a suitor to Hercules' mother) and low-budget romance This is Not a Love Story. In 2000 he guested on Street Legal as a friend of lawyer David Silesi (Jay Laga'aia), who comes to Silesi for help after being accused of murdering his wife.

Yiakmis then relocated to Australia. There he added to his policeman-heavy resume with recurring roles playing detective on both McLeod's Daughters and medical drama All Saints.  

In 2006 he joined the ensemble cast of acclaimed Australian feature Jindabyne, inspired by Raymond Carver story So Much Water So Close to Home. Yiakmis played one of a group of friends (alongside Usual Suspects import Gabriel Byrne) who discover the body of an aboriginal woman, while on a fishing trip.  

Yiakmis went on to play roles in two Kiwi television productions: Big Ari, one of the associates of drug kingpin Marty Johnstone on Land of the Long White Cloud (the Kiwi leg of the Underbelly franchise); and obnoxious financier Derek Pearson on 2013 crime drama The Blue Rose. 

Sources include
'Stelios Yiakmis' Johnson and Laird website. Accessed 7 February 2018
'Derek Pearson – Stelios Yiakmis' (broken link) The Blue Rose website. Accessed 13 February 2013
Shortland Street Official Collector's Magazine. Editor Sido Kitchin, 2012 
Unknown writer, 'Legal ease for Shortland Street doctor' - The Evening Post (TV Week liftout) 25 September 2000, page 7