Maria Amalia "Melina" Mercouri (Greek: Μαρία Αμαλία "Μελίνα" Μερκούρη, 18 October 1920 – 6 March 1994) was a Greek actress, singer, activist, and politician. She came from a prominent political family for multiple generations. She received an Academy Award nomination and won a French Cannes Film Festival Best Actress Award for her performance in the film Never on Sunday (1960) and an Italian David di Donatello for Topkapi (1964). Mercouri was also nominated for one Tony Award, three Golden Globe Awards, two BAFTA Awards, and one New York Film Critics Circle Award during the course of her acting career. In 1987, she was awarded a special accolade in the first edition of the Europe Theatre Prize.
Mercouri was a member of the Hellenic Parliament, elected as a representative of PASOK. In October 1981, she became the first female Minister of Culture and Sports. She has the longest tenure of any of Greece's Ministers of Culture, having served from 1981 to 1989, and then from 1993 until her death in 1994, during PASOK governments. Mercouri's political activism included her long campaign for the return of the Parthenon Marbles. One of her greatest achievements was the establishment of the European Capitals of Culture, with Athens chosen as the first capital in 1985.
The Mercouri family were an Arvanite family from Argolida, who settled in Athens. Its members had fought in the Greek war of independence of 1821. Melina's grandfather, Spyridon Mercouris, had served for many years as mayor of Athens. Her father, Stamatis Mercouris, was an officer of the cavalry and served as a member of parliament and minister (People's Party, National Radical Party), and for many years, he participated in the administration of the Panathinaikos team. During the Axis occupation of Greece, Stamatis Mercouris founded the resistance organisation Rizospastiki Organosis (Radical Organisation) in January 1942.
Melina's mother, Irene Lappa, was the sister of Admiral Pyrros Lappas, who served as Chief of the Naval Staff, Secretary General of the Olympic Games Committee, and Chief of the Military House of King Paul. Melina's uncle, George S. Mercouris, held extreme right-wing political views. He was a founder of the Greek National Socialist Party and a governor of the National Bank during the occupation. This so angered the Mercouri family that they refused to attend his funeral in 1943.
In September 1938, she was accepted at the Drama School of the National Theatre with fellow students including Despo Diamantidou and Alexis Damianos.
During the occupation, Melina became romantically involved with businessman Phidias Yadikiaroglou, while still married to Harokopos, although their marital relationship had effectively ended.
Mercouri was later criticized for living in comfort in a 400-square-meter apartment at Avenue Akademias 4, much of which had been commandeered by the Germans at a time when the Greek people were starving and for not contributing to the national resistance. Melina had commented on this period of her life, both in her autobiography, "I was born a Greek," and on television as Minister of Culture, taking responsibility for her nonparticipation in the Resistance during the Occupation.
Lycurgos Kallergis, a member of EAM and the Left during the Occupation, said: "Although I was and am a left-winger, the issue of the opulence in which she lived did not bother me. After all, Melina was hosting people, feeding people, helping friends.[...] " The great Greek writer Alkis Zei also agrees with this view, stating that during the period of occupation, Melina was hiding left-wingers and giving them money.
At the same time, her brother, Spyros Mercouris, had joined the Resistance as a member of the EPON. Many times, according to testimonies, Melina would secretly take Yadikiaroglou's money and give it to her brother for the Resistance, hiding both him and his comrades in the organization while helping her impoverished colleagues. During the occupation, despite her then-husband's objections, Melina's house, on her own instruction, was known to be always open and welcoming to many people in need, providing them with food and shelter.
Despite occasional criticisms, her dislike of the Nazi occupiers is demonstrated by an incident during the occupation where she disobeyed SS men while at a bar, despite the threat of being shot.
A number of people with strong resistance activities during the occupation became close friends of hers, including writer Iakovos Kambanellis (who wrote Stella with the Red Gloves especially for her), actress Olympia Papadouka, actor Manos Katrakis, actor and secretary of the EAM theatre Dimitris Myrat, writer Alkis Zei, director Nikos Koundouros, and Manolis Glezos.
During the civil war, although Melina Mercouri lived in Kolonaki, which was controlled by the British, she visited her friends and colleagues who had been arrested for their political beliefs. Years later, Aleka Paizi gratefully recounted Melina's visit to the prison where she was being held, to support her.
After her graduation, Mercouri joined the National Theatre of Greece and played the role of Electra in Eugene O'Neill's play Mourning Becomes Electra in 1945. In 1949, she had her first major success in the theatre playing Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, staged by Karolos Koun's Art Theatre.
After 1950, she moved to Paris, where she appeared in boulevard plays by Jacques Deval and Marcel Achard, and met French playwrights and novelists such as Jean Cocteau, Jean-Paul Sartre, Colette, and Françoise Sagan. In 1953, Mercouri received the Marika Kotopouli Prize. Mercouri returned to Greece in 1955. At the Kotopouli-Rex Theatre, she starred in Macbeth by William Shakespeare and L'Alouette by Jean Anouilh.
Mercouri's first film was the Greek language film Stella (1955), directed by Michael Cacoyannis, later known for Zorba the Greek (1964). The motion picture received special praise at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival, where she met expatriate American film director Jules Dassin, with whom she would share not only her career, but also her life. Their first professional pairing was He Who Must Die (1957). Other films by Dassin and featuring Mercouri followed, such as The Law (1959).
She garnered international acclaim when she starred in Never on Sunday (1960), of which Dassin was the director and co-star. For this film, she earned the Best Actress Award at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress and the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role.
After this, she starred in Phaedra (1962), for which she was nominated again for Best Actress in the BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations. Her role in Topkapi (1964) garnered her a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. The directors with whom Mercouri worked included Joseph Losey, Vittorio De Sica, Ronald Neame, Carl Foreman, and Norman Jewison. She starred in the Spanish language film The Uninhibited (1965) by Juan Antonio Bardem.
On June 11, 1967, Mercouri appeared on one of the final episodes of What's My Line (the venerable panel show would leave the air that fall, after 18 years).