[2] Olympia Dukakis (Greek: Ολυμπία Δουκάκη) was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, on June 20, 1931, the daughter of Alexandra "Alec" (née Christou) and Constantine "Costas" S.

"[6] Dukakis was an alumna of Arlington High School,[7] and was educated at Boston University where she majored in physical therapy, earning a BA, of which she made use when treating patients with polio during the height of the epidemic.

Transitioning to a professional life centered in New York City, she performed many times in productions in Central Park at the renowned Delacorte Theater.

Across that span, productions included works by Euripides, Eugene O'Neill, Samuel Beckett, Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, and Lanford Wilson.

[13] Dukakis's stage directing credits include many classics, such as Orpheus Descending, The House of Bernarda Alba, Uncle Vanya, and A Touch of the Poet, as well as more contemporary works, such as One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Kennedy's Children.

She appeared in Martin Sherman's one-woman play, Rose, entirely a monologue about a woman who survived the Warsaw Ghetto, in London and then on Broadway.

Twenty-two years after earning her first Obie, she won her second in 1985, a Ensemble Performance Award, for playing Soot Hudlocke in The Marriage of Bette and Boo.

[16] Dukakis appeared in a number of films, including Steel Magnolias, Mr. Holland's Opus, Jane Austen's Mafia!, The Thing About My Folks and Moonstruck, for which she won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.

She also played the role of Anna Madrigal in the Tales of the City television mini-series, which garnered her an Emmy Award nomination, and appeared on Search for Tomorrow as Dr. Barbara Moreno (1983), who romanced Stu Bergman.

The honors compounded as she collected the Los Angeles and New York Film Critics Awards, all in recognition of her talent, some acting improvised, as she delivered a serious while hilarious performance.

She was nominated for the Canadian Academy Award for The Event (2003) and in the middle of the first decade of the 21st century, her roles included 3 Needles, The Librarian: Return to King Solomon's Mines, In the Land of Women, and Away From Her, the 2006 film which cast her alongside Gordon Pinsent as the spouses of two Alzheimer's patients.

[23] In 2000, she played alongside Ian Holm, Judi Dench, Joan Sims (her final acting performance before her death in 2001),[24] and Romola Garai (her first professional role)[25] in the television film The Last of the Blonde Bombshells.

[41] In her 2003 autobiography, Ask Me Again Tomorrow: A Life in Progress, Dukakis describes the challenges she faced as a first-generation Greek-American in an area with anti-Greek ethnic bigotry, violence, and discrimination; difficulties with her mother and in other relationships; and battles with substances and chronic illness.

She taught acting for fifteen years at NYU[43] and gave master classes for professional theatre universities, colleges, and companies across the country.

[44] For ten years, beginning in 1985, she studied with Indian mentor Srimata Gayatri Devi in the Vedanta school of Hindu philosophy.