James P. Axiotis

James Photi Axiotis was born in Athens, Greece, on 4 June 1963. His mother, Georgia Korakis, was young and unmarried, and he was separated from her as an infant. In 1964 he was adopted by a Greek-American family and taken to the United States, where he grew up in Southern California. He was one of thousands of children of unmarried Greek mothers who were sent abroad for adoption in the 1950s and 1960s, a history he later researched and dramatised. His family obituary described him as Greek and Armenian, and he was active in Greek Orthodox church life from his youth.

Axiotis first worked around a television production at the age of 13, when his youth football team took part in an ABC programme. At 17 he appeared on screen as a Greek folk dancer in the 1981 film The Postman Always Rings Twice. He went on to work in television production and, according to GreekReporter, became one of NBC's youngest producers at 24.

Over a career of more than 40 years he worked as a producer, director, writer and post-production executive across network television, documentary, reality programming and digital media. His credits included local casting for The Bridges of Madison County and work on The Puppet Masters, America's Most Wanted, Cold Case Files, Hell's Kitchen, Marriage Boot Camp: Reality Stars, Home Free, Cooper's Treasure, Hacking the Wild, American Grit and NBC Nightly News. He founded JPA Productions and Legitimate Son Productions, and served as vice president of post-production at AT&T's Audience Network.

He served two terms on the national board of directors of the Producers Guild of America and was a member of the Producers Guild of Europe, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the American Film Institute, the Greek American Foundation and the Order of AHEPA. He also sat on the jury of the Los Angeles Greek Film Festival.

In his last years he developed Georgia, also titled Georgia: A Mother's Last Goodbye, a narrative short film about his birth mother returning to court in 1960s Athens to seek a final goodbye before her son was adopted abroad. The screenplay was an Official Selection at the Saronikos International Festival of Creative Arts and won Best Short Screenplay at the 8th Greece International Film Festival in Athens in September 2026. He was also involved in Another Place, a documentary about refugees in Europe, and in a revival of Reading Rainbow.

Axiotis was married twice and had three daughters, Anna, Sophia and Georgia, of whom he spoke with great pride. He was known for his humour and his love of Greek folk dancing, and he lived in later years in Charlotte, North Carolina, with his dog, Pippa. Through the Children of War Foundation he volunteered to fly to Kyiv to deliver medical supplies to hospitals during the war in Ukraine, and he supported refugee education near the Syrian and Jordanian border.

James P. Axiotis died suddenly at his home in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Sunday 18 October 2026, at the age of 63. His daughters Sophia and Georgia announced his death on social media on 21 October, writing that they were shocked and deeply grieved and that he would be buried near the ocean, his favourite place. The cause of death was not made public. His funeral took place at St. Nektarios Greek Orthodox Church in Charlotte on 22 October 2026, with interment at St. Basil Orthodox Cemetery in Castle Hayne, North Carolina, on 23 October. The family asked for memorial gifts to the Children of War Foundation and planned a celebration of his life at a later date.

Axiotis is remembered by colleagues as a hard-working veteran of American television and by the Greek diaspora as one of the adoptees who brought the story of Greece's post-war overseas adoptions to light. His award-winning screenplay Georgia, completed just weeks before his death, stands as a tribute to the mother he never knew, and his humanitarian work with the Children of War Foundation reflected the concern for displaced people that ran through his life.