- ‘Hunger Games’ Director Francis Lawrence Talks That Ending and ‘Constantine 2’ Optimism Hollywood Reporter
- ‘Songbirds & Snakes’ Director Francis Lawrence On Finding Tom Blyth; Lead Star Chats Coriolanus Snow’s Next Steps & Lucy Gray Baird’s Whereabouts – Crew Call Podcast Yahoo Entertainment
- Francis Lawrence on The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, Olivia Rodrigo, and more The A.V. Club
- ‘Songbirds & Snakes’ Director Francis Lawrence On Finding Tom Blyth; Lead Star Chats Coriolanus Snow’s Next Steps & Lucy Gray Baird’s Whereabouts – Crew Call Podcast Deadline
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Tag Archives: Constantine
Liverpool vs Arsenal assistant referee Constantine Hatzidakis accused of elbowing Andy Robertson – The Athletic
- Liverpool vs Arsenal assistant referee Constantine Hatzidakis accused of elbowing Andy Robertson The Athletic
- Watch Linesman Constantine Hatzidakis Elbow Liverpool Defender Andy Robertson Sports Illustrated
- WATCH: Linesman ELBOWS Liverpool defender Andy Robertson to spark half-time melee at Anfield Goal.com
- (Video) Robertson’s ‘stunned’ 15-word tunnel rant after shocking assistant elbow incident Empire of The Kop
- Roy Keane Calls Andy Robertson A “Big Baby” After His Reaction To Being Elbowed By Assistant Referee Constantine Hatzidakis Sports Illustrated
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Constantine, last Greek king whose monarchy ended in exile, dies at 82
A statement by Hygeia Hospital said the former king suffered a stroke and complications from other health problems.
He was the last ruler in a 19th-century family dynasty whose connections to Greece were tenuous but that sought to draw legitimacy from connections to the wider family tree of European royalty.
He lived for decades in London and was a cousin of King Charles III, a godfather to Prince William and part of the family line of Greece-born Prince Philip. The former king traveled as Constantine de Grecia under a Danish passport as a result of his family’s shared lineage with a branch of Denmark’s royal family — in addition to his marriage to a former Danish princess, Ann-Marie. His sister Sophia is the wife of the former Spanish king Juan Carlos.
But for Greeks, he remained deeply woven into the history of the 1967-1974 right-wing dictatorship, whose ruthless suppression of opposition still resonates as uncomfortable memories in the country’s political and cultural life.
Events began to unfold in 1965 when the young king feuded with Prime Minister Georgios Papandreou, leading to the collapse of his government. The political crisis — still known in Greece as the “Apostasy” — began a period of upheavals and caretaker governments.
“The people don’t want you, take your mother and go!” protesters shouted in 1965 in denunciations of the king and his mother, Queen Frederica.
The ongoing political unrest was used by a clique of Greek military officers as justification to take control of the country in April 1967. The “colonels,” as they were known, also feared that the king was planning preemptive moves to install his backers in power.
Backed into a corner, he agreed to officially inaugurate the junta as Greece’s new leaders. The king and his family then relocated to northern Greece, seeking to lead a countercoup. The plans fell apart and the family fled to Rome and later settled in London.
“It was the worst day of my life,” he said in describing the departure from Greece in a 2015 memoir released by the Greek newspaper To Vima. “That day, I saw my first white hair.”
Some officers in the Greek navy remained loyal to him and, in 1973, made another attempt at a revolt against the junta. The military rulers abolished the monarchy — even as he continued to claim he was Greece’s rightful monarch.
Junta leader George Papadopoulos labeled the former king “a collaborator with foreign forces and with murderers.”
After the dictatorship collapsed in 1974 — following a military crisis with Turkey over Greek attempts to unite with the island nation of Cyprus — he sought to make a dramatic return. He was advised to wait by political leaders, who were worried he would upset efforts to restore democracy. Instead, a referendum was held on whether to bring back the monarchy.
On the eve of the vote, the former king seemed confident. The outcome “will find my family and me back home,” he said from London. Yet nearly 70 percent of the votes cast were against reestablishing the royal family. The prime minister, Constantine Karamanlis, was quoted as saying that the voters had rid the nation of a cancerous growth.
The former king did not return to Greece until 1981, after being given clearance for a five-hour visit to bury his mother in the family cemetery of the former royal palace at Tatoi, north of Athens. (The Greek government announced that the former king’s remains would also be interred there.)
From London, the former king used his royal title and claimed ownership of family land in Greece, including Tatoi. In 1994, the Greek government formally stripped him of his citizenship and confiscated the royal property.
A lawsuit he filed in the European Court of Human Rights resulted in a 12 million euro award — far less than the 500 million euros he sought. In 1995, he boasted to Vanity Fair that he received 65,000 letters a year from Greek citizens and needed a four-person staff to help handle his affairs.
His life in exile was far from a bumpy ride. He hobnobbed with other members of European royalty, who often called him “Your Majesty.” He and his wife lived in a manse in London’s tony Hampstead Garden Suburb. If the British royals threw a gala, he was on the guest list.
When Athens hosted the Olympics in 2004, he returned as an honorary member of the International Olympic Committee. The appearance, however, was intentionally subdued at the request of organizers despite his stature as a past Olympic medal winner.
At the 1960 Rome Games, the then crown prince was part of the gold medal-winning team in three-person Dragon Class sailing. He also was the flag-bearer at the Rome Opening Ceremonies, and a Greek postage stamp was made in honor of his team’s victory.
In an interview with NBC’s “Today” during the Athens Olympics, the former king called Greece “his country.”
“I remember I had the privilege of holding the flag when our team came in,” he said, recounting the Rome Games, “and the roar of the crowd was something that is still in my ears.”
For more than a decade, he spent increasing time in Greece as authorities made accommodations and as protests over his presence largely faded. He also made some slight concessions. He belatedly recognized that the age of the monarchy in Greece was long over.
His official website listed him as King Constantine, former King of the Hellenes.
The future king was born on June 2, 1940, in Athens to Princess Frederica of Hanover and Prince Paul, the younger brother of Greece’s King George II and heir to the throne.
Before Prince Constantine’s first birthday, the family fled for Alexandria, Egypt, as Nazi forces occupied much of the country. The family later spent time in South Africa before returning to Greece in 1946 — just as the country was moving into a disastrous civil war between communist-backed forces and nationalists, many loyal to the monarchy.
The nationalist side won, but political rifts remained strong for decades and spilled over into divided views on the monarchy — which some critics decried as outsiders with family links to wartime foe Germany.
The prince was educated at boarding schools and military academies in preparation for the throne. His turn came in 1964, when was he was 23, after the death of his father, King Paul. (The family had ruled Greece since 1863 except for 1924 to 1935).
The final king of Greece is survived by Anne-Marie, his wife of 58 years; five children, Alexia, Pavlos, Nikolaos, Theodora and Philippos; and nine grandchildren.
His lineage tracks back to the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, which includes Denmark and other countries. He refused to adopt any of those names, however, after the Greek government said he could have his passport restored only if he adopted a surname.
“I don’t have a name,” he said in 1995 in London. “My family doesn’t have a name.”
Glücksburg is the name of a place, he noted, like any London borough.
“I may as well call myself Mr. Kensington,” he said.
Constantine, the former and last king of Greece, dies at 82
ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Constantine, the former and last king of Greece, who won an Olympic gold medal before becoming entangled in his country’s volatile politics in the 1960s as king and spent decades in exile, has died. He was 82.
Doctors at the private Hygeia Hospital in Athens confirmed to The Associated Press that Constantine died late Tuesday after treatment in an intensive care unit but had no further details pending an official announcement.
When he acceded to the throne as Constantine II 1964 at the age of 23, the youthful monarch, who had already achieved glory as an Olympic gold medalist in sailing, was hugely popular. By the following year he had squandered much of that support with his active involvement in the machinations that brought down the elected Center Union government of prime minister George Papandreou.
The episode involving the defection from the ruling party of several lawmakers, still widely known in Greece as the “apostasy,” destabilized the constitutional order and led to a military coup in 1967. Constantine eventually clashed with the military rulers and was forced into exile.
The dictatorship abolished the monarchy in 1973, while a referendum after democracy was restored in 1974 dashed any hopes that Constantine had of ever reigning again.
Reduced in the following decades to only fleeting visits to Greece that raised a political and media storm each time, he was able to settle again in his home country in his waning years when opposing his presence no longer held currency as a badge of vigilant republicanism. With minimal nostalgia for the monarchy in Greece, Constantine became a relatively uncontroversial figure.
Constantine was born June 2, 1940 in Athens, to Prince Paul, younger brother to King George II and heir presumptive to the throne, and princess Frederica of Hanover. His older sister Sophia is the wife of former King Juan Carlos I of Spain. The Greek-born Prince Philip, the late Duke of Edinburgh and husband of the late Queen Elizabeth II, was an uncle.
The family, which had ruled in Greece from 1863 apart from a 12-year republican interlude between 1922-1935, was descended from Prince Christian, later Christian IX of Denmark, of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg branch of the Danish ruling family.
Before Constantine’s first birthday, the royal family was forced to flee Greece during the German invasion in World War II, moving to Alexandria in Egypt, South Africa and back to Alexandria. King George II returned to Greece in 1946, following a disputed referendum, but died a few months later, making Constantine the heir to King Paul I.
Constantine was educated at a boarding school and then attended three military academies as well as Athens Law School classes as preparation for his future role. He also competed in various sports, including sailing and karate, in which he held a black belt.
In 1960, aged 20, he and two other Greek sailors won a gold medal in the Dragon Class — now no longer an Olympic class — at the Rome Olympics. While still a prince, Constantine was elected a member of the International Olympic Committee and became an honorary member for life in 1974.
King Paul I died of cancer on March 6, 1964 and Constantine succeeded him, weeks after the Center Union party had triumphed over the conservatives with 53% of the vote.
The prime minister, George Papandreou, and Constantine initially had a very close relationship, but it soon soured over Constantine’s insistence that control of the armed forces was the monarch’s prerogative.
With many officers toying with the idea of a dictatorship and viewing any non-conservative government as soft on communism, Papandreou wanted to control the ministry of defense and eventually demanded to be appointed defense minister. After an acrimonious exchange of letters with Constantine, Papandreou resigned in July 1965.
Constantine’s insistence on appointing a government composed of centrist defectors that won a narrow parliamentary majority on the third try was hugely unpopular. Many viewed him as being manipulated by his scheming mother, dowager Queen Frederica.
“The people don’t want you, take your mother and go!” became the rallying cry in the protests that rocked Greece in the summer of 1965.
Eventually, Constantine made a truce of sorts with Papandreou and, with his agreement, appointed a government of technocrats and, then, a conservative-led government to hold an election in May 1967.
But, with the polls heavily favoring the Center Union and with Papandreou’s left-leaning son, Andreas, gaining in popularity, Constantine and his courtiers feared revenge and with the aid of high-ranking officers prepared a coup.
However, a group of lower-ranking officers, led by colonels, were preparing their own coup and, apprised of Constantine’s plans by a mole, proclaimed a dictatorship on April 21, 1967.
Constantine was taken by surprise and his feelings toward the new rulers were obvious in the official photo of the new government. He pretended to go along with them, while preparing a counter-coup with the help of troops in northern Greece and the navy, which was loyal to him.
On Dec. 13, 1967, Constantine and his family flew to the northern city of Kavala with the intention of marching on Thessaloniki and setting up a government there. The counter-coup, badly managed and infiltrated, collapsed and Constantine was forced to flee to Rome the following day. He would never return as reigning king.
The junta appointed a regent and, after an abortive Navy counter-coup in May 1973, abolished the monarchy on June 1, 1973. A July plebiscite, widely considered rigged, confirmed the decision.
When the dictatorship collapsed in July 1974, Constantine was eager to return to Greece but was advised against it by veteran politician Constantine Karamanlis, who returned from exile to head a civilian government. Karamanlis, who had also headed the government between 1955-63, was a conservative but had clashed with the court over what he considered its excessive interference in politics.
After his triumphal win in November elections, Karamanlis called for a plebiscite on the monarchy in 1974. Constantine was not allowed in the country to campaign, but the result was unambiguous and widely accepted: 69.2% voted in favor of a republic.
Soon after, Karamanlis famously said the nation had rid itself of a cancerous growth. Constantine said on the day following the referendum that “national unity must take precedence … I wholeheartedly wish that developments will justify the result of yesterday’s vote.”
To his final days, Constantine, while accepting that Greece was now a republic, continued to style himself King of Greece and his children as princes and princesses even though Greece no longer recognized titles of nobility.
For most of his years in exile he lived in Hampstead Garden Suburb, London, and was said to be especially close to his second cousin Charles, the Prince of Wales and now King Charles III.
While it took Constantine 14 years to return to his country, briefly, to bury his mother, Queen Frederica in 1981, he multiplied his visits thereafter and, from 2010, made his home there. There were continued disputes: in 1994, the then socialist government stripped him of his nationality and expropriated what remained of the royal family’s property. Constantine sued at the European Court of Human Rights and was awarded 12 million euros in 2002, a fraction of the 500 million he had sought.
He is survived by his wife, the former Princess Anne-Marie of Denmark, youngest sister of Queen Margrethe II; five children, Alexia, Pavlos, Nikolaos, Theodora and Philippos; and nine grandchildren. ___ Derek Gatopoulos in Athens contributed.
Keanu Reeves Returns for ‘Constantine’ Sequel, HBO Max Reboot Dead
The only soul Satan himself would come up to collect is getting a follow-up film. “Constantine” is back.
Variety can confirm that Warner Bros. will make a sequel to the 2005 supernatural action film “Constantine” starring Keanu Reeves. The blockbuster star will reunite with original director Francis Lawrence, best known for taking over the “Hunger Games” franchise after the first film.
“Constantine” has been a hot property in Hollywood, sparking a NBC series created by Daniel Cerone and David S. Goyer, and was even more recently being developed into a new series for HBO Max by J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot Productions. However, sources tell Variety that the HBO Max series is now dead, although the streamer had been in early talks with an actor for the lead role before the new movie came together. Four scripts were written for the new adaptation set in contemporary London.
Another Justice League Dark project that is also being put to the side is the “Madame X” series produced by Angela Robinson. But this doesn’t mean both series can’t be resurrected somewhere else. Sources say that both Warner Bros. Television and Bad Robot remain extremely high on both projects and expect to find a new home for them both.
Adapted from the DC comics, John Constantine is an exorcist trying to tip the scales in the battle between good and evil in his favor. Able to see the demons and angels influencing regular folks, Constantine is driven to send every last demon to hell thus solidifying his place in heaven because, “What would you do if you were sentenced to a prison where half the inmates were put there by you?”
This sequel has long been whispered about among fans, especially after the big 15-year reunion both Reeves and Lawrence attended at Comic-Con. Plus the star himself has openly expressed interest in returning to the holy war raging on the streets of Los Angeles. “I just loved that world, ” Reeves told Variety, “and I love that character.”
Details are scarce but we know the bare bones of the deal: Akiva Goldsman (who’s been helming the multiple new “Star Trek” series on Paramount +) will write and produce through his production company Weed Road Pictures, along with Bad Robot’s J.J. Abrams and Hannah Minghella.
Fingers crossed this reunion also brings back the very best interpretations of Gabriel and the Devil himself (Tilda Swinton and Peter Stormare) in the history of cinema. And if Gavin Rossdale wanted to return as well… we’d be down.
Joe Otterson and Ellise Shafer contributed to this report.
Michael Constantine, Dad in ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding,’ Dies at 94
“I just knew I belonged there,” Mr. Constantine told Odyssey, an English-language magazine about Greek life, in 2011. “They could make fun of this hick from Pennsylvania, but I just belong here — this is me.”
The young Mr. Constantine studied acting with Howard da Silva, supporting himself with odd jobs, among them night watchman and shooting-gallery barker. He became an understudy to Paul Muni playing the character modeled on the famed defense lawyer Clarence Darrow in “Inherit the Wind,” which opened on Broadway in 1955.
In “Compulsion” — a 1957 Broadway dramatization of Meyer Levin’s novel about the Leopold and Loeb murder case — Mr. Constantine took over the role of the defense lawyer from Frank Conroy just before opening night. (Mr. Conroy withdrew after suffering a heart attack during previews.)
“Michael Constantine gives an excellent performance as the prototype of Clarence Darrow,” Brooks Atkinson wrote in The New York Times. “He avoids the sentimentality that the situations might easily evoke and plays with taste, deliberation, color and intelligence.”
Mr. Constantine’s other Broadway credits include Anagnos, the director of the Perkins Institute for the Blind in the original cast of “The Miracle Worker” (1959), and Dogsborough in Bertolt Brecht’s antifascist satire “Arturo Ui” (1963).
Mr. Constantine’s first marriage, to the actress Julianna McCarthy, ended in divorce, as did his second, to Kathleen Christopher. His survivors include two sisters: Patricia Gordon and Chris Dobbs, his agent said. A complete list of survivors was not immediately available.
For all Mr. Constantine’s credits, for all his critical acclaim, it was for a single role — and for a single prop wielded in the course of that role — that he seems destined to be remembered.
“I can’t tell you,” he said in a 2014 interview with his hometown paper, The Reading Eagle, “how many times I’ve autographed a Windex bottle.”
Alyssa Lukpat contributed reporting.