Olympia Dukakis brought a dry voice and an unhurried intelligence to women too easily filed away as sensible mothers. We rate her most highly when a film gives those women desires of their own, as Moonstruck does.
Fi1m perspective
In Moonstruck (1987), Olympia Dukakis lets Rose Castorini pause before speaking, weighing how much honesty the conversation will bear. The friction with Vincent Gardenia's Cosmo gives her comedy to work with, but she never seems occupied with securing the next laugh. We were moved by Rose's disappointments, because Dukakis lets them register in the pauses without asking for a speech. She makes us want to stay with the older characters even when the romance has other plans.
Shanley's writing gives those older characters desires of their own, and Dukakis makes good use of the attention. David Watkin's cinematography keeps faces worth studying, allowing her to hold a scene without filling it with talk. Philip Rosenberg's production design gives the family rooms the look of places people have occupied for years. This is the right company for her: a writer who has bothered with the character and a film that lets us watch her think.
That performance was her screen breakthrough at 56, after stage work stretching back to the early 1960s. The subsequent supporting roles often called on her dry delivery and authority, with maternal typecasting the persistent limitation. Her Personnel Director in Mike Nichols's Working Girl (1988) followed soon afterwards; we recommend its warm, sharp office comedy, though our strongest evidence for Dukakis remains Moonstruck. Being so readily recognisable as the woman with good sense could also mean being given too little else to do.
Steel Magnolias (1989) cast her as Clairee Belcher, a sharp-tongued Southern widow, while television's Tales of the City (1993) gave her Anna Madrigal, a landlady she would return to. These parts belong to a screen career easily reduced to the raspy voice and the firm opinion. Her continued stage work, including Mother Courage and Her Children (2013), is a useful warning against that reduction. We value the comic certainty, but we value her more when a film gives her something difficult to consider before she answers. Start with Moonstruck, and do not treat the family scenes as an interruption.
Biography
Olympia Dukakis was an American actress. She was born on 20 June 1931 in Lowell, Massachusetts, and died on 1 May 2021 in New York City. The daughter of Greek immigrants, she initially trained in physical therapy before turning to acting.
Dukakis began her career in theatre, winning an Obie Award for Best Actress in 1963 for her performance in Bertolt Brecht's Man Equals Man. She appeared in numerous stage productions and later moved into film and television.
She received an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for her role as Rose Castorini in Moonstruck (1987). Other film credits include the Personnel Director in Working Girl (1988). She published an autobiography, Ask Me Again Tomorrow, in 2003.
