DUKAKIS, Olympia 1931-

PERSONAL:

Born June 20, 1931, in Lowell, MA; daughter of Constantine S. (a factory worker and manager) and Alexandra (a textile worker; maiden name, Christos) Dukakis; married Louis Zorich (an actor); children: Christina, Peter, Stefan. Education: Boston University, B.A., 1952, M.F.A., 1957.

ADDRESSES:

Home—222 Upper Mountain Ave., Upper Montclair, NJ 07043. Agent—William Morris Agency, Avenue of the Americas, 32nd Fl., New York, NY 10019.

CAREER:

Actor, writer, director, producer, and women's health advocate. Worked as a physical therapist at the Hospital for Contagious Diseases, Boston, MA, and in Marmet, WV; cofounder of Charles Street Playhouse, Boston, 1957; Whole Theater Company, Montclair, NJ, cofounder and artistic director, 1971-90; Voices of the Earth (theater company), cofounder, 1990s. Drama teacher at New York University, 1974-83, and Yale University, New Haven, CT, 1976. Actress in plays, including The Breaking Wall, 1960, The Aspern Papers, 1962, A Long Day's Journey into Night, 1962, A Man's a Man, 1963, Electra, 1964, The Rose Tattoo, 1965, Mother Courage and Her Children, 1967, Curse of the Starving Class, 1978, Snow Orchid, 1982, The Marriage of Bette and Boo, 1985, Social Security, 1986, Hecuba, 1995, The Hope Zone, 1996, Singer's Boy, 1997, Lear, 1998, Rose, 2000, and Credible Witness, 2001; actor in films, including Lilith, 1964, John and Mary, 1969, Made for Each Other, 1971, Rich Kids, 1979, The Wanderers, 1979, The Idolmaker, 1980, Flanagan, 1985, Moonstruck, 1988, Working Girl, 1988, Steel Magnolias, 1988, Dad, 1989, Look Who's Talking,1989, The Cemetery Club, 1992, I Love Trouble, 1994, Mighty Aphrodite, 1995, Mr. Holland's Opus, 1995, Better Living, 1998, Jane Austen's Mafia, 1998, and Brooklyn Sonnet, 2000; television appearances include Search for Tomorrow (series), 1983-84, The Last Act Is Solo (play), 1991, Sinatra (movie), 1992, Tales of the City (miniseries), 1994, Young at Heart (movie), 1995, More Tales of the City (miniseries), 1998, The Pentagon Wars (movie), 1998, The Greek Americans (documentary), 1998, Joan of Arc (miniseries), 1999, The Last of the Blonde Bombshells, 2000, and Guilty Hearts (miniseries), 2002; narrator of films, including A Paralyzing Fear: The Story of Polio in America (documentary), 1998, and Climb against the Odds (documentary), 2000; various guest appearances on shows, specials, and awards ceremonies; director of plays, including One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, Talley's Folly, Arms and the Man, The House of Bernarda Alba, Orpheus Ascending, Uncle Vanya, and U.S.A., all for Whole Theater, Social Security, Ethel Barrymore Theatre, Six Characters in Search of an Author and A Touch of the Poet, both for Williamstown Theater Festival, and Kennedy's Children, Commonwealth Stage. Founding member, National Museum of Women in the Arts.

MEMBER:

Amnesty International, National Organization for Women, Women in Film, Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), Broadway Cares.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Obie Awards, 1963, for A Man's a Man, and 1985, for The Marriage of Bette and Boo; Academy Award, New York Film Critics Award, Los Angeles Film Critics Award, Golden Globe Award, National Board of Review Award, and American Comedy Award, all for Moonstruck; CableACE Award, 1991, for The Last Act Is Solo; Emmy Award nomination, 1991, for Lucky Day; Walt Whitman Creative Acts Award (New Jersey), 1992; Golden Globe nomination, 1992, for Sinatra; Emmy Award and Screen Actors Guild nominations, 1998, for More Tales of the City; Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation grant; former New England fencing champion.

WRITINGS:

(With Emily Heckman) Ask Me Again Tomorrow: A Life in Progress (memoir), HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2003.

Author of adaptations of plays for the Whole Theater Company, including Edith Stein, The House of Bernarda Alba, Mother Courage and Her Children, and Uncle Vanya.

SIDELIGHTS:

Olympia Dukakis has made her mark in the worlds of stage, screen, and television as an actor, writer, director, and producer. Born in Massachusetts, she is the daughter of Greek immigrants and also the cousin of that state's former governor and presidential hopeful, Michael Dukakis. Dukakis has often been cast in the role of a mother, and one of these parts won her an Oscar for best supporting actress. In the romantic comedy Moonstruck, she plays Rose Castorini, the mother of the character played by Cher, who received an Oscar for best actress for her role in the film that also starred Nicholas Cage. Dukakis followed this accomplishment with several memorable roles, including as one of the six actresses who shared the bill in Steel Magnolias. But although she has continued to appear in films, Dukakis has never relinquished her commitment to her stage work. She had first acted in plays thirty years before Moon-struck made her name a household word, and she is the founder or cofounder of three separate theatrical groups.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution contributor Teresa K. Weaver interviewed Dukakis and commented on her memoir, Ask Me Again Tomorrow: A Life in Progress, saying that "at seventy-two, Dukakis is disarmingly forthright and funny. Her memoir … is a freewheeling, intimate conversation about how she defines herself in terms of ethnicity, gender, and now age. Clearly, she revels in being a work in progress." Dukakis begins her book in 1988, when she won the Oscar. She also writes of her childhood in Lowell and her conformity to her parents' expectations. Acting, she declares, saved her from a life that included drug and alcohol abuse and depression. Dukakis's education began as a physical therapy student at Boston University, which she followed with a job working with children afflicted with polio during the epidemic of the 1950s. She returned to college to study acting under Peter Kass and became a professional actor when she was in her late twenties, specializing in character parts. Dukakis was a cofounder of the Charles Street Playhouse in Boston, where she remained for three years. Her Off-Broadway debut came with the 1960 premier of The Breaking Wall, a play about Italian peasants. Two years later she arrived on Broadway, playing Leocadia Begbick in Michael Redgrave's A Man's a Man, for which she received an Obie Award in 1963.

Dukakis married actor Louis Zorich, and they had three children, but the stress of their careers and the fact that they had to work many other jobs in order to make ends meet finally led them to a decision to leave New York. Together with acting relatives and friends, they moved to New Jersey, where they founded the Whole Theater Company. This new project drew on all of Dukakis's skills. She added producing, directing, and fundraising to her resume. During this period, she also taught acting, and when Zorich was injured in an automobile accident, she began to work in television, beginning with the soap opera Search for Tomorrow. But it was her Broadway performance in Mike Nichols's Social Security that caused Moonstruck producer Norman Jewison to cast her in the Oscar-winning part.

Because of her new star status, Dukakis was offered lucrative film contracts that enabled her to remain involved in theater. She has said that at the time she won her Oscar, she and her husband were paying for their daughter's education with credit cards. She was also offered juicier parts, however, particularly that of Anna Madrigal, the transgendered, pot-growing landlady who runs a rooming house in the miniseries Tales of the City. The 1994 series was a Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) project that brought to television the serialized stories of Armistead Maupin, which were published in book form after being carried by the San Francisco Chronicle. The stories that reflect both straight and gay life in the San Francisco of the 1970s received rave reviews, but their depictions of gay love and dope use also drew the kind of criticism that caused PBS to back away from the sequel, which Showtime chose to produce, and which was even more risqué than the first collection.

Dukakis was further praised for her lead in the 1995 production of Hecuba, the Greek tragedy by Euripides which was performed at San Francisco's American Conservatory Theater. At about the same time, she received a grant, which she used to begin the theater company Voices of the Earth with actresses Joan MacIntosh, Leslie Ayvazian, and Remi Barclay Bosseau.

Today, Dukakis continues to advance theater projects and also work on behalf of women's health, promoting cholesterol and osteoporosis awareness and education.

Lynn Andriani, who interviewed Dukakis for Publishers Weekly, asked her if in writing the book she felt she had succeeded in defining herself. Dukakis replied, "No. I think by the end of the book I finally figured out I'll never define myself fully. It's a constantly changing process."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Theatre, Film, and Television, Volume 26, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1999, pp. 122-125.

Dukakis, Olympia, and Emily Heckman, Ask Me Again Tomorrow: A Life in Progress (memoir), Harper-Collins (New York, NY), 2003.

Newsmakers 1996, Issue 4, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1996, pp. 134-137.

PERIODICALS

American Theatre, September, 1995, Timothy Near, "Earth Mom," p. 10.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution, July 25, 2003, Teresa K. Weaver, "Book Buzz: Actress Dukakis a Work in Progress," p. F1.

Booklist, June 1, 2003, Mary Frances Wilkens, review of Ask Me Again Tomorrow, p. 1708.

Christian Science Monitor, August 8, 2003, Iris Fanger, review of Ask Me Again Tomorrow, p. 16.

Entertainment Weekly, July 11, 2003, Caroline Kepnes, "Celeb Bio-Diversity," p. 82.

Kirkus Reviews, May 15, 2003, review of Ask Me Again Tomorrow, p. 727.

Library Journal, June 15, 2003, Rosellen Brewer, review of Ask Me Again Tomorrow, p. 74.

Publishers Weekly, May 5, 2003, review of Ask Me Again Tomorrow, p. 207, Lynn Andriani, "Moonstruck: Just One of Many Successes," p. 208.

ONLINE

BookPage,http://www.bookpage.com/ (July, 2003), Pat Broeske, review of Ask Me Again Tomorrow.

Cinema Confidential Online,http://www.cinecon.com/ (July 29, 2003), Thomas Chau, "Interview: Olympia Dukakis on Her Book, Ask Me Again Tomorrow. "*