Reclaiming Greece’s national star: Aliki Vougiouklaki, from sex kitten to working girl

During the so-called ‘Golden Age’ of Greek cinema (roughly from 1950 to 1970), Aliki Vougiouklaki emerged as Greece’s biggest star. Yet, although her image remains extremely familiar, it is largely misconstrued in both popular and critical discourses about her. This article shifts the focus from conventional readings of Vougiouklaki’s star persona as ideologically and sexually conservative, mainly due to her embodiment of the sex-kitten type, to the work dimension of her image – a heretofore unexplored facet of her persona. A careful look at her early films, the control she exercised over the construction of her star image, as well as the ways in which it circulated off-screen reveals a dogged, stereotypically ‘masculine’, devotion to her work and career, making Vougiouklaki into a powerful and progressive image of femininity in post-war Greece.