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James P. Axiotis is a Greek-born American television and film producer, writer, director, humanitarian advocate, and founder of Legitimate Son Productions. His career spans more than four decades across network television, documentary film, reality programming, digital media, independent production, and international storytelling.
Born in Athens, Greece, Axiotis spent the first 499 days of his life without a given name before being adopted from an orphanage and brought to the United States by a Greek American family. He was raised in Granada Hills, California. His experience of separation, adoption, and the search for identity eventually became an important foundation for his work as a storyteller.
Axiotis first stepped onto a professional set at the age of 13 as an extra in the television film "Mighty Moose and the Quarterback Kid." The experience gave him an immediate sense of direction. He began his career as a production assistant and worked his way through production and postproduction as a coordinator, supervisor, associate producer, producer, and executive producer. By the age of 24, he was producing for network television.
During the decades that followed, Axiotis worked across broadcast, cable, streaming, documentary, sports, faith-based, digital, and independent production. He has worked on projects for major television networks and media platforms and has become known for production execution, postproduction leadership, international collaboration, and managing complex productions while protecting the human story at their center.
Axiotis served two terms on the National Board of the Producers Guild of America and participated in its International Committee and Asian American and Pacific Islander Committee. He is a member of the Producers Guild of America and the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. He is also a member of the Academy Circle of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.
In 2022, Axiotis dedicated a chair in the Princess Anne Theatre in London in memory of his mother, Georgia Korakis. The chair serves as a permanent tribute to the young woman whose love, sacrifice, and final goodbye shaped the course of his life.
His international perspective has been formed through his Greek heritage, production work, humanitarian service, and personal experience. His work and travels have taken him across Europe, the Middle East, and North America, including Greece, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Poland, Ukraine, Jordan, Qatar, Mexico, and the United States.
As an advisor to Children of War Foundation, Axiotis traveled to Jordan near the Syrian border to support and document the foundation’s work with refugee children and families displaced by conflict. He also helped support Season of Giving, a Christmas initiative serving refugee children in Jordan.
In 2022, he traveled to Ukraine as part of a humanitarian mission that helped deliver approximately half a million dollars’ worth of medicine and critical supplies to hospitals and clinics in Kyiv and Lviv. He has also supported nonprofit organizations including Project Angel Food and Fix’n Fidos in Los Angeles.
Axiotis served as an executive producer of "Another Place," a feature documentary directed by Jhizet Panosian that follows refugees rebuilding their lives after resettlement across Europe. Supported through his former company, JPA Productions, the documentary has been recognized by international festivals and refugee organizations in the United Kingdom, Greece, Canada, Japan, France, and Italy. Distributed by Uncork’d Entertainment, "Another Place" is available on Amazon Prime Video.
Building upon his production experience and personal history, Axiotis founded Legitimate Son Productions. The company develops narrative and documentary projects examining adoption, displacement, family separation, identity, historical memory, faith, injustice, and the search for belonging.
The company’s flagship narrative project is "Georgia," a Greek-language period short film inspired by the true story of Axiotis and his mother. Set in Athens in 1964, the film follows a young unmarried woman who is brought before a court to say goodbye to her infant son before he is adopted and taken to America. It was the last time she ever saw him.
Axiotis is the writer, director, and producer of "Georgia." Production planning is underway in Greece with Greek, British, and international collaborators. The project is being developed as a standalone narrative short and as a proof of concept for a larger story examining the international adoption of Greek children during the 1950s and 1960s and the human consequences that continued long after they left the country.
The film is being designed for an international festival path, with particular attention to period-appropriate language, locations, wardrobe, production design, and music. Its development has also led to partnerships with humanitarian and women’s advocacy organizations in Greece.
Axiotis’ personal adoption story has reached an international audience through the I’m Adopted platform, receiving more than 3.4 million views and contributing to a broader conversation about adoption, memory, identity, and truth.
Through Legitimate Son Productions and his collaborations with filmmakers, professional guilds, humanitarian organizations, and international partners, James P. Axiotis continues to develop stories that cross borders, preserve memory, examine injustice, and recognize the dignity of people whose lives have often been overlooked or defined by labels placed upon them.
