Melina Mercouri

Melina Mercouri (1925–1994), Greek actress and politician. As minister of culture from 1981 to 1989 and from 1993 to 1994, she was a tireless campaigner for the arts both at home and within the European Community. She campaigned in particular for the return of the Elgin Marbles to Greece from the United Kingdom. As an actress she gained international recognition in the film Never on Sunday (1960), in which she played an exuberantly cheerful prostitute.

Born Maria Amalia Mercouris into a political family (her grandfather was four times elected the mayor of Athens), Mercouri embarked on an acting career, coming to notice outside Greece in the film Stella (1955). Her subsequent film career included appearances in international productions such as The Victors (1963) but was closely associated with director Jules Dassin, whom she married in 1966. Their films together included a modern-dress version of Phaedra (1962) and a commercially successful comedy thriller, Topkapi (1964).

Mercouri was in the United States at the time of a 1967 military coup in Greece and was stripped of her nationality by the new regime, against whom she campaigned vocally. In 1977, three years after the regime’s fall, she was elected to parliament for the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (Pasok) party headed by Andreas Papandreou. From then until her death she represented the constituency of Piraeus (Pireás), in which the film Never on Sunday had been set. When Pasok took power, she was appointed culture minister and took up in particular the cause of the Elgin Marbles—or, as she preferred to call them, the Parthenon Marbles—a collection of marble sculptures created in the 5th century bc and taken to London in 1806 and now housed in the British Museum.