The cause of her death might be considered a modern form of Greek tragedy. She often said that smoking was her "challenge against fear." Friends urged her to quit, but even after she was given a diagnosis of lung cancer five years ago, she continued to chain-smoke.
Mercouri was never exactly eager to please anybody. The daughter of a Minister of the Interior, she defied her parents at 17 by marrying a wealthy Greek merchant much older than she (they divorced in 1962) and enrolling in the National Theatre of Greece. After triumphing onstage in Athens and Paris, she became an international star as a fiercely independent Piraeus prostitute in Never on Sunday, appearing opposite her then-lover, Jules Dassin, whom she married in 1966. (He was at her side when she died.)
But Mercouri chose to devote most of her ardor to Greek politics. When she spoke out against the military dictatorship that ruled Greece from 1967 to '74, she was stripped of her citizenship. She returned to Greece from Paris in 1974 after the election of the New Democracy Party. She served as a Member of parliament from Piraeus from 1977 to '89, as Culture Minister from 1981 to '89 and helped found the Panhellenic Socialist Movement. "I thought she was the happiest she'd ever been, while in politics," said her friend of 30 years, costume designer Theoni Aldredge. "Melina was beautiful and flamboyant, and everything she did was to the utmost."
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
