COMMUNITY
Olympia Dukakis charms, inspires Women’s Fund inaugural event
Published: June 04, 2009, 12:30 am
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Academy Award-winning actress Olympia Dukakis charmed and inspired the crowd who gathered Wednesday night in Kleinhans Music Hall for the inaugural “Signature Event” of the Western New York Women’s Fund.
Dukakis shared stories of pivotal and meaningful moments in her life that helped define her identity—her Greek-American roots, the many years she spent trying to make it in theater before her big break in “Moonstruck” at age 56 and how motherhood changed the way she felt about her passion for the stage.
She recalled the many years she spent hitting the audition circuit in New York City, and she recounted how she was often written off, even ridiculed, because of her “ethnic” name.
“It was a name that caused me a great deal of problems,” she said. “It was an ethnic name. . . . You’re looking at me now. Couldn’t I say to you: ‘I’m Elizabeth Anderson.’ Well, if I tied my hands down,” she joked as the audience erupted into laughter. “I couldn’t even read for a part called ‘Elizabeth Anderson’ because my name was Olympia Dukakis.”
Dukakis said she refused to change her name and became determined to prove to the world that she “was not only as good as anyone else, but I was better.”
She talked of how years later, when her cousin, Michael Dukakis, became the Democratic nominee for president in 1988, suddenly her hard-to-pronounce name was a household name.
She remembered being at the Democratic Convention in Atlanta hearing a massive crowd chanting “Du-ka-kis, Du-ka-kis.”
“No one could hear me, but I started to shout out all those Greek names. . . . Alexandra, Constantinos, Aphrodite,” she said. “All those names that I had fought over.”
She shared her thoughts about growing older, about how one day, as she was about to take the stage in the Public Theater in New York, she realized that her drive to compete and be better than everyone else had disappeared. The epiphany led her to rethink her love of acting and helped shape her desire to be more connected with her community.
She now embraces challenges and change, and is willing to turn down roles if she feels they don’t suit her.
“I want to do things simply because I’ve never done them before,” she said.
She urged her audience to embrace women of all ages.
They “must be persuaded that they are important,” she said.
Dukakis also praised the Women’s Fund, which raises money for programs that help empower low-income girls and women.
The organization strives “to honor the spirit within that seeks to know and realize itself . . . to raise our voices, to break the silence, changing and shaping the lives of women. This is the heart of the matter.”
mbecker@buffnews.com
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