Veteran stage and screen actor Olympia Dukakis, pictured at the New York premiere of Tales Of The City in 2019, has died at the age of 89.Olympia Dukakis, the veteran stage and screen actor whose flair for maternal roles helped her win an Oscar as Cher’s mother in the romantic comedyDukakis died Saturday morning in her home in New York City, according to Allison Levy, her agent at Innovative Artists.
Dukakis, who was born in Lowell, Mass., had yearned to be an actor from an early age and had hoped to study drama in college. Her Greek immigrant parents insisted she pursue a more practical education, so she studied physical therapy at Boston University on a scholarship from the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis.
It was a shocking change, she told an interviewer in 1988, noting that she had gone from the calm world of science to one where students routinely screamed at the teachers.Her first graduate school performance was a disaster, however, as she sat wordless on the stage.