Hollywood star John Stamos has opened up about his love of Greece and his heritage in his new memoir, If You Would Have Told Me.
The Full House actor’s grandfather moved to the US from the Arcadian village of Kakouri and changed his name from Stamatopolous to Stamos.
In an interview with Travel + Leisure, the Greek American talked about his memoir and his love of travel, especially to his family’s homeland.
The first time he took his wife to Greece, they went to his grandfather’s village – also partly to film an episode of the heritage-tracing show Who Do You Think You Are? that aired in 2017.
However, it isn’t only the village that he reminisces about the most with Greece.
“It’s about my dad and the feeling that I get both with my history and my heritage,” he told the magazine.
“My dad loved it. He found this little tavern, and I haven’t been back, but he was back in the kitchen cooking with the guys and help picking the fish.
“He just loved being around that kind of environment. Those kinds of places always remind me of him and I just see him in a lot of that over there. So, it’s not one place.”
Stamos shared that on a recent trip there, he felt that every older man he encountered reminded him of his father, Bill Stamos Sr, who passed away in 2001.
When he travelled there for his 60th birthday in August this year, the actor found it a little upsetting because he wasn’t feeling his father’s energy this time.
“Every time I went to Greece before, it was always about my dad. I could feel my dad, everywhere I went. I took him there before he died, one of the last trips he went on.”
“It was almost like I was trying to manufacture that (feeling) for some reason. It first sort of made me sad because it’s been so many years now.”
But the 60-year-old has found a new reason to connect with Greece, his five-year-old son Billy. who he says has allowed him to see the country through new eyes but also strengthen his connection with his late father.
Billy is now asking about his grandfather, so Stamos says it’s bringing his memories back.