Olympia Dukakis, an American actress, director, producer, teacher and activist, has appeared in over 130 plays, over 60 films and 50 television series. She is best known as a film actress, although she started her career in theater.
Shortly after arriving in New York, in 1963, she won the Obi Award for Best Actress for her role in Off Broadway’s Bertold Brecht’s Man is Man.
She later opted for film and, among other accolades, won an Oscar and a Golden Globe for her role in the 1987 film Enchanted by the Moon. She was nominated for a Golden Globe in the film Sinatra and for the Emmy Award for the films Happy Day, City Stories and Jovanka Orleanka.
In July 2003, she published the autobiographical book Ask Me Tomorrow: Life in Progress, which was well received by critics. A feature-length documentary about her life, Olympia, was shown in the United States last year.
Olympia Dukakis was born on June 20, 1931 in Lovell, Massachusetts, as the older of the two children of Constantine and Alexandra Dukakis, both Greek immigrants. Her father was a factory worker, but he was also the founder of an amateur theater company.
Olympia graduated in physical therapy from the University of Boston and did that job traveling through West Virginia, Minnesota and Texas during the worst days of the polio epidemic. In the end, she earned enough money to return to Boston and enroll in the drama academy.
Before she finished her studies, she started a new career and made her stage debut in 1956. She moved to New York in 1959 and the following year she starred in The Breaking Wall
Her first screen appearance was in 1962 in the television series Doctor Kildare.
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