Leonidas Lolis

Leonidas Lolis was born in Albania, though his father's origins are half Greek. His parents emigrated to Greece in the 90s, and Leo was raised in Athens until he emigrated to the United Kingdom in the early 00s. Leo completed a degree in Acting and Directing at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, and was first seen on screen playing Polish stable boy JP in the 6 part BBC drama Rough Diamond (2006). He then took on a regular role in the soap Hollyoaks (1995), playing Albanian immigrant Aleksander Malota, followed by another regular role in the ITV soap The Royal Today (2008), playing Kristaps, a Polish hospital porter with a mysterious background. His following roles included real life character and Nazi-killer pilot Josef Frantisek in WW2 drama The Untold Battle of Britain (2010), followed by loose cannon "Bluto" in Casualty (1986), and Jewish translator "Stepanovs" in Casualty 1909 (2009). He recently played Jaris in the BBC2 adaptation of the award winning The City and the City (2018), playing a strong and rebellious character against David Morrissey and directed by Tom Shankland. Leo has also taken part in a string of Radio 4 dramas, more recently playing Kosovarian "Rron" in Finn Kennedy's "On Kosovo Field", which won Best Drama at the National Radio Awards. Throughout his career Leo has also written and produced short films, most notably he won Best Script at the Clapperboard Awards for his feature film Northern Symphony. In 2017, Leo studied Method Acting at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in New York City.