Career
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 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. 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.
Despite this early emphasis on makeup, Stavrakis eventually gravitated almost exclusively toward stunt work, serving as stunt coordinator on Day of the Dead and the Romero-scripted, while his acting work during this period included a brief stint on As the World Turns as Stavros, a Greek interpreter.
His more recent film work includes appearances in Martin Campbell"s The Mask of Zorro, Gore Verbinski"s Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (in a "Tortuga Island" sequence which was edited from the first film but utilized in the sequel) and Michael Mann"s 2006 Miami Vice redux, as well as wrangling duties on pictures such as Jackass Number Two and the Seth Green road-trip comedy Sex Drive. In 2010, Stavrakis returned to his roots, appearing as a featured zombie in the pilot episode of the Administrative Management College Network series The Walking Dead.
