For a long time, Greek audiences did not know about how Greek acting icon Aliki Vougiouklaki used a body double in two of the most commercial films of her career.

That body double was Mitsi Karra (also known as Dimitra Kapetanopoulou), who was a seamstress by profession, but had also participated in beauty pageants, before it was time to duplicate Aliki.

Ms Karra took part in the beauty pageants for the title of Miss Greece in 1960 and made it as one of the five finalists.

The young woman was fluent in French, English and Arabic and had received a diploma as a seamstress, although she did not follow the profession.

The first time we saw Ms Karra in place of Ms Vougiouklaki was in the 1969 film The fairy and the boy (Η Νεράιδα και το Παλικάρι), during which Ms Vougiouklaki fell pregnant with Giannis.

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“At that time, Aliki was pregnant with her Giannis in the middle of the shooting of the movie ‘The Fairy and the Boy’. So they asked for a double. I had worked with Finos for two years and so they used me in difficult and distant shots.

We had the best relationship. She loved me and appreciated what I did. She was generous and very good with her colleagues. The same goes for Dimitris Papamichael. We had a nice time in Crete,” she had told Neos Kosmos.

The next collaboration of the two was in The teacher with blonde hair.

Ms Karra replaced Ms Vougiouklaki on set during the scene with the attack of the Italians at school, in which we see a beam falling on her.

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Ms Karra had stated that she would have liked to continue the collaboration, however it did not eventuate.

“You know, if we stayed in Greece, I would have continued working with Finos. It was a well-paid job and I was happy. It was the time we now call the ‘golden age of cinema’,” she said.

A year after the beauty pageant, she married Giannis Kara (Karathanasis) after a thunderous love affair and years later they ended up in Australia.