Helena Kallianiotes (born March 24, 1938) is a Greek-born American film actress. In 1973, she was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture for her role as Jackie Burdette in Kansas City Bomber.
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Career overview
"Helena’s dancing so overwhelmed me with awe and happiness that when I heard later that she was at a place on Hollywood Boulevard called the Greek Village, I dragged every date there and made him pay clip-joint prices so I could see the girl move." - Eve Babitz
During the late 1960s, Helena Kallianiotes was the resident belly dancer at The Intersection, a Middle Eastern Greek and Balkan members-only international folk dance club at 2735 West Temple Street and North Lafayette Park Place in Los Angeles, California. This engagement led to her first film appearance as an uncredited belly dancer in the 1968 film Head, directed by Bob Rafelson and starring The Monkees. Two years later, Kallianiotes was cast in another Rafelson film, Five Easy Pieces, starring Jack Nicholson and Karen Black. She played Palm Apodaca, a neurotic, cleanliness-obsessed lesbian hitch-hiker, traveling with her companion (played by Toni Basil).
In 1972, Kallianiotes appeared in her most celebrated role as the ultra-aggressive roller derby skater Jackie Burdette in Kansas City Bomber, for which she received a Best Supporting Actress nomination for the 1973 Golden Globe Awards. Her other film roles include Mata Hari in Shanks (1974), Elaine Reavis in The Drowning Pool (1975), Anita in Stay Hungry, the Visionary Woman in The Passover Plot (both 1976), and a future-reading brothel madam in Nicolas Roeg's Eureka (1983).
Life outside of film
In 1975, Kallianiotes appeared on the cover of Art Garfunkel's album, Breakaway.
In 1978, for about four years, Kallianiotes hosted a Monday roller-skating club night, in Sherman Square Roller Rink, Skataway, after holding a birthday party, at the corner of Reseda Boulevard and Sherman Way, with jackets by Richard Tyler for Cher, Ed Begley Jr., Allegra Huston, Marlon Brando, Jack Nicholson, and others.
From 1985 to 1991, she operated Helena's, a private members-only club at 2735 West Temple Street and North Lafayette Park Place in Los Angeles, across from LAPD Rampart Division station. From 1967 to 1984, the location was formerly The Intersection, a folk dance coffeehouse, similar to Intersection for the Arts.