Taso N. Stavrakis
| Taso N. Stavrakis | |
|---|---|
| Born |
July 12, 1957 Canton, Ohio, United States |
| Occupation | Actor, stunt performer |
| Years active | 1977 – present |
Taso Nicholas Stavrakis (born July 12, 1957) is an American film and television actor and stunt performer best known for his appearances in the George A. Romero films Dawn of the Dead, Knightriders, and Day of the Dead. Recruited by his good friend and Carnegie-Mellon University classmate Tom Savini, Stavrakis assisted with stunts and special makeup effects on several seminal 1980s horror productions, including the original Friday the 13th, in which he portrayed "The Prowler" (as the unidentified killer was initially referred to in Victor Miller's screenplay). Romero frequently joked that Stavrakis should be included in the Guinness Book of World Records for having appeared as the most zombies in his Dead series (5 in Dawn and 4 in Day).
Post-college gigs in New York City included numerous off-Broadway plays and commercial jobs, including the first human incarnation of the Captain Morgan character for a rum advertisement and Battlestar Galactica's Lucifer character for an automobile commercial.
Offered the opportunity to portray villain Jason Voorhees in Friday the 13th Part 2, Stavrakis turned down the role as his friend Savini had declined to create the film's makeup effects. He instead took an opportunity to create special makeup effects for He Knows You're Alone, an early thriller by Armand Mastroianni (and incidentally Tom Hanks's first feature film), with whom Stavrakis would work again on the 2006 cinematic adaptation of The Celestine Prophecy.
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