Greek-American actor John Stamos has opened up about his love for Greece in his new memoir If You Would Have Told Me, released last month.
Whilst filming an episode of the heritage-tracing show Who Do You Think You Are? which aired in 2017, the Hollywood star visited his grandfather’s village, Kakouri, but it’s not the village that he reminisces about the most…“It’s about my dad and the feeling that I get both with my history and my heritage,” he said in a recent interview (his father, Bill Stamos Sr. died in 1998).
However, when he went to Greece this summer to celebrate his 60th birthday, the actor said it was a bit upsetting because he wasn’t feeling his father as much this time around.
“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.”
However, a new travel companion, his 5-year-old son Billy, has allowed him to see Greece through new eyes and strengthen the connection to his father. He referenced the sentiment of the Disney film Coco in which talking about the deceased keeps the memory and the spirit of the person intact for longer.
“The whole thing there is that you die and you go to heaven. And then if people on earth don’t talk about you and tell stories about you and put pictures up, then you die for good up there,” Stamos said.
“So I figured I just need to start talking about it and bring his memories back and then my son started asking about him and it just came full circle.”