John Aniston, the Greek Born Soap Star, and Jennifer Aniston’s Father Has Died

Aniston had played a different character, a doctor, on Days of Our Lives in 1969-70, then worked on two other daytime serials, CBS’ Love of Life and CBS/NBC’s Search for Tomorrow, before returning to Days in July 1985. He received a Daytime Emmy nomination for his efforts in 2017.

“Soap operas have just the right amount of recognition. You get just enough to satisfy your ego but not enough to disrupt your life,” he said in a wonderful 2018 interview with Adrienne Faillace for the Television Academy Foundation website The Interviews. “Whereas some people, my daughter being one of them, can’t go anywhere.”

The dashing Aniston also appeared twice on Kojak — that show’s star, the late Telly Savalas, was Jennifer’s godfather — and also showed up on episodes of Combat!, I Spy, The Virginian, That Girl, Airwolf, Star Trek: Voyager, The West Wing, Gilmore Girls, Cold Case and Mad Men.

In the early 1970s, Aniston made it through three auditions to play newscaster Ted Baxter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, but the part eventually went to Ted Knight.

“The original script described [the character] as the Marcello Mastroianni of Minneapolis,” he said. He was told he didn’t get hired because producers “didn’t want the possibility of a romance between Baxter and Mary.” When he saw the show, he realized that Knight was perfect for the part.

One of four children, Yiannis Anastasakis was born on July 24, 1933, in Chania on the Greek island of Crete. His father, Antonios, had gone back and forth between the U.S. and Greece before leaving his home country for good in 1935, bringing the family to Chester, Pennsylvania, where he opened a restaurant.