“My ambition wasn’t to win the Oscar,” the veteran stage and screen actor said. “It was to play the great parts.”
MAPLEWOOD, N.J. — Olympia Dukakis, the veteran stage and screen actress whose flair for maternal roles helped her win an Oscar as Cher’s mother in the romantic comedy “Moonstruck,” has died. She was 89.
Dukakis had yearned to be an actress 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. During their first years of marriage, acting jobs were scarce, and Dukakis worked as a bartender, waitress and other jobs.
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