Tag: Olympia Dukakis

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Olympia Dukakis, Oscar Winner For ‘Moonstruck,’ Dies At 89

Oscar winner Olympia Dukakis dies at the age of 89

Oscar winner Olympia Dukakis dies at the age of 89
Olympia Dukakis (image via Twitter)
Academy Award winner Olympia Dukakis, known for playing world-weary and wise characters, has passed away at the age of 89. After decades of stage work on the East Coast, Dukakis shot to stardom playing Cher’s mother in the film adaptation of John Patrick Shanley’s Moonstruck in 1987. The following year she took home the Oscar and Golden Globe honors for Best Supporting Actress in a Film. More from the New York Times:

She played a catty Southern widow in the mostly female ensemble cast of “Steel Magnolias” (1989); the mother of Kirstie Alley’s character in the three “Look Who’s Talking” movies (1989-93); the pot-growing transgender San Francisco landlord Anna Madrigal, from 1993 to 2019, in the four television mini-series made from Armistead Maupin’s “Tales of the City” stories; and Frank Sinatra’s mother, Dolly, in the 1992 television movie “Sinatra.”

Despite the awards and her other screen successes, Ms. Dukakis never gave up theater work. In 2011 she starred in an Off Broadway production of Tennessee Williams’s “The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore.”

Charles Isherwood, reviewing her performance in The Times, called her “macabre, hilarious and weirdly touching,” with a “bullying bravado that commands attention.” The next year she played Prospero (Prospera, actually) in “The Tempest” for Shakespeare & Company in Massachusetts.

Rest in peace Olympia Dukakis.

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Cast Of Netflix’s Tales Of The City Reads ‘The Coming Out Letter’

More than 30 years after it was published, Armistead Maupin's Letter To Mama is still so powerful that Laura Linney, Ellen Page, and their Tales Of The City co-stars can barely get through reading it without crying.

More than 30 years after it was published, Armistead Maupin’s Letter To Mama is still so powerful that Laura Linney, Ellen Page, and their Tales Of The City co-stars can barely get through reading it without crying.

Such an incredibly talented cast. Watch how Olympia Dukakis takes in each line before connecting with the camera with devastating honesty.

If you haven’t watched the new Netflix revival of Tales of the City, you really must.

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DVD: “Cloudburst”

Thom Fitzgerald (The Hanging Garden) directs Oscar-winners Olympia Dukakis and Brenda Fricker in his critically acclaimed lesbian road movie, Cloudburst.

Dukakis and Fricker star as a long-term lesbian couple who escape from the nursing home to road trip from Maine to Nova Scotia to get legally married.

With a latter-day Thelma and Louise vibe,  they pick up a handsome gay male hitchhiker and encounter various other complications on their way to what viewers hope is a happy ending.

The film, which slowly made its way through the festival circuit last year to broad international acclaim, finally has a U.S. release date; Cloudburst will be available on digital platforms on Tuesday, and on DVD July 30 from lesbian-owned distributor Wolfe Video.