He was born in 1932. His parents, poor refugees from Asia Minor, lived in Galatsi. Stavros Tornes grew up among laborers who had to work hard to make a living, a problem that he would soon have to face himself. He attended the two first grades of elementary school and then left school in order to work and to contribute financially towards his family's daily needs.

He voiced his leftist ideas very early on, and for this reason he did his military service without bearing arms, on Makronissos, the island of political exiles, and was classified as "untrustworthy". In 1957 he attended the Ch. Ioannidis film school and met young filmmakers of his own generation. He acted in a number of films of the time, before making his directorial debut with the documentary Theraic Dawn, in 1967. Immediately afterwards, he left Greece and went to Italy. There, he made a living doing different jobs, however, he was able to enter into the world of cinema, and appeared as an actor in many films by noteworthy directors. At the same time, with the few means at his disposal, he managed to shoot three films before returning to Greece in 1981. He continued to work with great determination, making four more films on a shoestring budget. His "non-rationalist" ideas and opinions about film will lead him to clash with an establishment which, for many years, adamantly refused to incorporate his efforts into the main body of Greek film production, and insisted on referring to this leading filmmaker as a poet.