Olympia Dukakis

About

Olympia Dukakis (June 20, 1931 – May 1, 2021) was an American actress. She performed in more than 130 stage productions, in some 60 films, and in approximately 50 television series. Best known as a screen actress, she started her career in theater. Not long after her arrival in New York City, she won an Obie Award for Best Actress in 1963 for her off-Broadway performance in Bertolt Brecht’s Man Equals Man.
She later moved to film acting and won an Academy Award and a Golden Globe, among other accolades, for her performance in Moonstruck (1987). She received another Golden Globe nomination for Sinatra (1992) and Emmy Award nominations for Lucky Day (1991), More Tales of the City (1998) and Joan of Arc (1999). Dukakis’s autobiography, Ask Me Again Tomorrow: A Life in Progress, was published in 2003. In 2018, a feature-length documentary about her life, titled Olympia, was released theatrically in the United States.

Olympia Dukakis (Greek: Ολυμπία Δουκάκη) was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, on June 20, 1931, the daughter of Alexandra “Alec” (née Christou) and Constantine “Costas” S. Dukakis. Her parents were Greek immigrants; her father a refugee from Anatolia…