Though the film was initially made for television, Elias Koteas's performance was so powerful that the movie was given a limited theatrical release and received 2 GENIE AWARD nominations, one for direction and the other for Koteas as best actor. His breakout role was that of Canadian investigative journalist Victor Malarek in the true story Malarek (1989).
Coppola used Koteas again in Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988), and the actor played a young Aristotle Onassis in the made-for-television movie Onassis: The Richest Man in the World (1988). Small parts in films followed, the first being in Phillip Borsos's One Magic Christmas (1985), then in Some Kind of Wonderful and Francis Ford Coppola's Gardens of Stone (both in 1987). He started to land stage work, most notably in the North American premiere of the play Kiss of the Spider Woman. He was a member of the Academy's 1983-84 production company and also attended the prestigious Actors Studio in New York, where he studied under Ellen Burstyn. Prior to graduation he began attending acting classes, which led him to apply for admission to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City in 1981. Elias Koteas, an intense, brooding actor of Greek descent, studied at Vanier College in Montréal with the idea of pursuing architecture or civil engineering as a career. Elias Koteas Elias Koteas, actor (b at Montréal 11 March 1961).