keep Greece in the euro, but also argued for an easing of the terms of the EU-IMF bailout.
Foreign creditors and EU capitals geared up for a fight -- but once in power, Samaras jumped on the austerity bandwagon.
Elected member of parliament at the age of 26 after an elite education, Samaras had a meteoric rise to power which was cut short during the crisis with the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia in the 1990s.
He then formed his own party, Political Spring, but its early success fizzled out and he disappeared from the political scene for almost a decade.
In 2004, Samaras was allowed back into New Democracy and five years later he beat the daughter of the prime minister he toppled, Dora Bakoyannis, to become party leader.
A descendant of a prominent family, Samaras holds economics and business degrees from top American schools Amherst College and Harvard University.
While at Amherst, he was friends with former Greek prime minister and socialist party Pasok leader George Papandreou, who was later to become his political rival, a source of amusement for the Greek media.
Samaras took a strong stance on immigration, pledging to “take back” Greek cities from “illegal invaders” -- a reference to hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants, which he placed in detention centres and deported back home.
Ironically, critics say Samaras himself is partly to blame for Greece’s immigration problem.
As foreign minister some two decades ago, he is said to have contributed to the first wave of illegal migration by opening the border to ethnic Greeks from neighbouring Albania when its communist regime imploded.
Samaras also famously pledged to “eat iron” to bring investment to Greece, although results were mixed on his watch.
A number of major corporations including Hewlett-Packard and Philip Morris set up logistics hubs in Greece, but some prominent companies such as dairy giant Fage and Coca-Cola Hellenic also moved out.
A father of two, Samaras’s ancestors were wealthy ethnic Greek merchants from Alexandria, Egypt, who founded the Benaki Museum, one of Greece’s leading cultural establishments. His great-grandmother Penelope Delta was one of the country’s best-loved novelists.