Elena Kampouris

New York Roots and First Steps

Elena Kampouris was born in New York City in 1997. The daughter of a Greek father from the island of Kasos and a Franco-American illustrator, she did not have a red-carpet childhood or grow up on TV sets.

Her first real experience in front of the camera came in 2012. She appeared in an episode of Gossip Girl. The role was small, but it helped casting directors notice her sharp features and pale, striking gaze.

It worked.

In 2013, she filmed Labor Day. She played the younger version of Rachel in a production that starred Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin. It was her first taste of the big leagues of Hollywood.

Jason Reitman's Vision

In 2014, she starred in Men, Women & Children. In this Jason Reitman film, she played a teenager with an eating disorder. She had to lose weight drastically and follow a strict diet supervised by doctors to meet the demands of the script.

And her commitment to physical realism paid off.

That same year she appeared in The Cobbler alongside Adam Sandler. It was a period of rapid learning in which Kampouris began to understand that her look suited both dark dramas and lighter productions.

The Greek Phenomenon and Broadway

Her commercial breakthrough came in 2016 with My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2. She played Paris, the daughter of the leads. The film grossed 90 million dollars worldwide and put her on the map for mainstream audiences.

But Elena Kampouris was looking for more than family comedies.

That same 2016 she made her Broadway debut. She worked in the play Les Liaisons Dangereuses alongside Janet McTeer and Liev Schreiber. She played Cécile Volanges, and critics praised her ability to hold her own against veterans of the New York stage.

Superheroes and a Return to Her Roots

In 2021, Netflix premiered Jupiter's Legacy. Kampouris played Chloe Sampson, a rebellious superheroine who rejects her family's legacy. It was a production with a budget of $200 million that was canceled after just one season.

Because failure is part of the game in the industry too.

She reprised her role as Paris Miller in 2023 for the release of My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3. The shoot moved to Greece, and she took the opportunity to reconnect with her father's culture while filming on natural locations in Athens and Corfu.

While working on her most recent projects, she has kept a low profile on social media. In 2024, her representation agencies confirmed her involvement in several independent projects shot on the East Coast. The contracts for these productions include confidentiality clauses about final salaries.