Ask Me Again Tomorrow

by Olympia Dukakis

  For the first time in a long while, I found myself thinking about my career, which was something that I had not thought about consciously for years. All of the attention I was getting was lovely, of course, but I was more than a little confused about why it had come at this point, and with this role, which, to my mind, was not the greatest part I had ever played. On the contrary, and quite honestly, I had taken the part of Rose Castorini largely for the money it would bring in and for the chance to work with the director Norman Jewison. The script was excellent, but the character of Rose was a familiar one to me. Maybe it was the ethnicity—I had played a lot of Italians—but I felt comfortable with the character. What excited me was how beautifully the part was written, not the challenge of the role. I found it difficult to accept all the acclaim this one role had brought me. I had played so many great parts on stage and I felt that if I claimed only this role as my greatest success, I would be turning my back on all the other parts. I remember telling one of my friends, the great stage actor Austin Pendleton, about how confused I was by the attention I got for my work in Moonstruck, and he said something so wonderful to me that I’ve never forgotten it. He told me that he saw all of my work in Rose Castorini. I understood, for the first time, how sometimes we are rewarded for our efforts long after we’ve given up any expectation for external gratification or the need to be recognized for this or that particular piece of work. I had always focused on the process and aspired to do the work for the work’s sake. I had, thankfully, over and over again during my thirty-year career, held to the belief that the work itself would provide its own gratification. I was stunned by how brilliantly this moment shone, how it seemed to come from out of left field, with no warning. And, truth be told, it took me awhile to get comfortable with the attention, with the impact it had on my life.

  I did not become an actor in order to become famous or rich. I became an actor so I could play the great parts: the Greeks, Chekhov, Shakespeare, Molière, Racine, Arthur Miller, Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, and Brecht. My dream, since college, was to have my own theater company and travel to capitals of Europe performing the classics. What I wanted was the chance to inhabit great characters whose yearnings and passions opened up for me a way of seeing the world and would help me to break free from the limitations I had struggled with that came not just from the world around me, but from the world within me. I had discovered that the stage gave me a safe arena in which to express my emotions. It was a place with firm enough boundaries that I could take emotional and psychological risks there. It was also a place where I could be physical, sexual, and spontaneous. It was the place where I felt the most alive.

  One of the things I had to learn, over and over again, as an actor and as a person, was to resist the urge to be competitive, to moderate my continued drive to always want to win. This is another reason why winning the Oscar when I did confused me in some ways. I had finally learned to be less competitive, less combative with the world, and so it was more than a bit ironic in some ways that I found myself “winning” this award at all. But the pleasant tremors I had experienced since my Oscar nomination signaled to me that for the first time, really, I was at a place in my life where, despite the bills, the pressures of the theater company, the demands of my family—despite all of it—I finally felt comfortable enough with who I was as a person to just let myself enjoy this time.

  It was hard to believe, but all the signs around me said I truly was a contender. A favorite even, if one were to believe the odds the bookies in Vegas put on my chances. I even started to think that Jewison might be right and that I had a very good chance of winning. So, unlike the Golden Globes, I decided to prepare for my next trip to Los Angeles. For the first time in the twenty years that I’d lived in Montclair, I finally went into the most upscale dress shop in town, where I bought a black dress. Bonnie, meanwhile, booked a hair and makeup artist in Los Angeles to help me dress and prepare on Oscar day.

  Entertainment Tonight decided they wanted to continue filming me throughout the Oscar process, and they were very generous with making sure that I had whatever I needed. A limousine was sent to take Louie and me to Newark Airport for the flight to Los Angeles. The much-loved and respected Governor Thomas Kean of the state of New Jersey was there to send us off, and there were fifty or so fans lined up at the terminal bearing GO OLYMPIA! signs. Even the local news station had someone there covering this “event” for the eleven o’clock news. I remember walking through the airport and feeling, at least for that moment, that I truly was a favorite child of the state. I was incredibly moved by this unexpected show of support.

  Once we got to L.A., I really started to feel the whole thing was unreal in some way. Just a few weeks before, I had been clipping coupons and shopping for bargain jeans, while working ten-to twelve-hour days at the theater. Now I was checking into the Four Seasons and being told I had “signing” privileges (which meant I could have whatever I wanted with a quick flick of a pen). We decided, Louie and I, why be shy now? So we threw a cocktail party and then a champagne reception for our L.A. friends and we kept our energy up by getting massages, eating great food, and enjoying every luxury that was offered.

  By the time the concierge called us on the evening of the Oscars to say that our limo was ready, Louie and I were so excited we actually ran down the hall to the elevators. We couldn’t wait to get to the ceremony.

  Our car joined the parade of limos that made a slow-moving procession to the Shrine Auditorium. At one point we came to a complete stop and heard a knock on our limo door. It was Jon Voight; he had been riding in the limo behind us and it had broken down. Would we mind if he rode with us? We decided this was the perfect time to open the bottle of champagne that was chilling in a silver bucket in the backseat.

  When we pulled up to the red carpet, I was stunned by what we encountered. There was an exuberance bordering on pandemonium. The party had apparently already started. It’s as though all these grown-ups had suddenly reverted to being children who were just told adult swim was over and it was okay to jump back into the pool—tux and all. I’d only experienced this level of celebratory abandon one other time in my life: when I was host to fifteen seven-year-old boys at a birthday sleepover. Outside the theater, there were literally hundreds of photographers all yelling “Olympia! Olympia!” and my head would turn involuntarily every time I heard my name. I was stunned by all the lights and the attention, and it dawned on me that I had no idea how to do this. How were we supposed to walk through this tangle of photographers as though it were the most natural thing in the world? I decided the best thing to do was to simply follow the lead of the people in front of us, and so we made our way down the red carpet and into the auditorium.

  All of the nominees were seated together in the center section. We had barely—and I mean barely—sat down when my name was called. “And the Oscar goes to—Olympia Dukakis!” I instinctively leaned into Louie and kissed him and he immediately slumped over, sobbing. It was almost as if he had absorbed the emotional impact of the moment for both of us, because I was able to get up and walk to the stage with this incredible feeling of calm. Of being present. The one thought I had was, “I wish Daddy were here to see this.” My mother, of course, was watching all of this on TV, back home in Montclair.

  When I held that statuette in my hand and felt the weight of it, I hoisted the Oscar aloft and cried out, “Okay, Michael! Let’s go!” This was not something I had planned to say, but my cousin Michael was making a bid to become the Democratic nominee to run for president of the United States, and that golden statuette felt like a baton in my hand. I felt as though I had run the first leg of a very important race and it was time to hand off that baton to Michael so that he could run the second leg. It seemed absolutely natural to do this in that moment. I felt as though I were floating on a current of ancestral energy—the energy that had blessed and cursed me for five decades—and that now heralded what our parents had worked so hard for.

  Afte
r the show, I was hooked up by satellite to Michael, who was celebrating Oscar night back in New York City at Grand Ticino, the restaurant featured in Moonstruck. We talked and laughed and cried. Neither of us could even begin to imagine that for the next six months, our name would literally be everywhere. We had fulfilled the aspirations of our parents and had validated—for ourselves, our cousins, and all of our ancestors—that what our parents believed in and cherished most mattered. Our parents had set a course for us, based on their absolute belief in the American Dream, and we had navigated that course and it took us where they had dreamed we could go.

  I remember looking out at Louie then and he was still crying.

  Even at that moment, I couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened if I had taken the well-intentioned advice that was heaped on me thirty years before and had changed my name. Believe me, I had seriously considered doing it, because I was discriminated against time and time again because my name—because I—was so ethnic. It would have been a hell of a lot easier to get acting jobs if my name were Day instead of Dukakis, but then I wouldn’t have had the satisfaction of seeing the family name—my parents’ name—displayed so visibly during that time.

  Almost before I got off the stage at the Shrine Auditorium on Oscar night, I was initiated into the very rarefied world of “Hollywood Insider.” For the first, and maybe the last, time, I was able to glimpse how the system really worked. How those who lived inside the industry defined success. On one level, it was stunning to have such an intimate look at the “system,” but on another level, it was disheartening to understand the implications of how it all worked.

  But I had no time to dwell on this or anything else now. I was whisked off the stage and I remember flashbulbs going off, and reporters, and getting back into the limo and heading off to Spago with Louie, my brother, Apollo, his wife, Maggie, and their son, Damon, who were now living in Los Angeles.

  First there were the interviews. They started taking place immediately after I’d won and before I could even get back to my seat to watch the rest of the show. The atmosphere around the interview room was simply a more organized and civilized version of the preshow media frenzy that I’d already dealt with while walking down the red carpet. But I no longer felt paralyzed: I felt more like an actor who is called upon to deliver a short, improvised monologue, over and over again. I was asked to stand in front of a special Oscar-night backdrop and hold my Oscar in a particular way that would ensure that it was captured to its best advantage in each picture. “Olympia! How does it feel to be an Oscar winner?” “Did you know you’d strike gold with this part in Moonstruck?” “How does it feel to be an overnight success?” “What are you going to do next?” “What was it like to work with Cher?” When it seemed that I’d given someone the two-second sound bite he or she was after, the next interviewer stepped up.

  Then, before I knew it, we were driven to Spago, where I was congratulated by people such as Robert Altman, Audrey Hepburn, Shirley MacLaine, and Mel Gibson. This was definitely fun, but there were weird aspects to this attention, too. I can’t recall anything particular from that night, but Louie remembers an odd encounter. He saw an old colleague coming our way, an actress he’d appeared with in a long-running play. She approached us with her arms outstretched and blew right past Louie and threw her arm around me and smiled for the camera. It was as if Louie, whom she’d come to know quite well, just didn’t exist. At least not when there was a photo-op for her with a bona fide Oscar winner!

  Though this struck both of us more as funny than anything else, it was an example of the kind of disingenuousness that was part of the Hollywood insider game that was often rude and disrespectful.

  I’m still amazed at how I finally came to play the role of Rose in Moonstruck. Most of us would call this “luck.” But luck only works if you’re prepared when the opportunities present themselves. For me, it started with being cast as Soot in the Christopher Durang play The Marriage of Bette and Boo. Nora Ephron caught that performance and she recommended me to Mike Nichols, who was directing the movie version of her novel Heartburn. I was cast, but somehow, none of the scenes I was in ever made it into the final cut. But Nichols liked my work and cast me in the Broadway production of Social Security by Andy Bergman, starring Ron Silver and Marlo Thomas. The night before the audition, I worked all night, reading the script. I liked it but I was convinced that I couldn’t do the part. She was an eighty-year-old Jewish woman—what could a fifty-year-old Greek actress do with that? After reading all night, the next morning I told Louie I was going to cancel the audition. He said, “Let me see that script.” He read for a moment, then looked at me and said, “Go in and do your mother.”

  I got on the bus to New York City and read all the lines with my mother’s voice in my head. When I got to the theater, there were half a dozen other women—all older, and perfect-looking for the part—waiting to audition. I thought, Okay, I’m here, let me do my mother—and they all laughed at my lines. I thought, Well, I’m not going to get the part but I’m giving a damn good audition. Later that afternoon, they called and told me the part was mine.

  Unbeknownst to me, the director Norman Jewison came to see the show twice. He was casting Moonstruck and cast me as Rose Castorini without ever having me audition for the part. Later he told me that when he saw me on stage, he knew that I had the right “comic timing,” and that was enough for him. He wanted me for the role of Rose.

  January 1987 found me in Toronto filming Jewison’s movie. Moonstruck had an excellent script by John Patrick Shanley (who received the Oscar for best original screenplay). It opened during the Christmas season of 1987 and was met with immediate buzz. In January 1988, I was invited to introduce the film at the Sundance Film Festival, which was then (and still is) the preeminent festival for independent filmmaking, and the rest, well, as they say, is history (or more accurately, my story).

  After we left the Oscar party at Spago, we went on to two other star-studded parties, and Louie and I finally stumbled back into our room at the Four Seasons at about four A.M.

  The next few days continued to be an exhaustive round of interviews, get-togethers, and smaller celebrations. All I remember is that I didn’t have the right kind of wardrobe for these events, so I bought one good pair of black pants and a black sweater with blue stripes. This became my favorite interview uniform. When the hype died down and the interviews ended, I finally looked at that battered old sweater, said thank you, and threw it out.

  There was one event in those first few days back from Los Angeles that actually came close to matching the rush of exhilaration I felt on stage when the Oscar was handed to me. The town of Montclair, New Jersey, threw a parade when I returned and it was wonderful. The mayor presided over the afternoon and even had a replica of my Oscar to hand to me in front of the entire town. The parade route came up Bloomfield Avenue, the main street that runs the length of Montclair, and traffic was backed up as far as the eye could see. I stood with my family, the mayor, and other local dignitaries on a platform that was set up right in front of our theater company. I remember wanting to take advantage of all of this attention and funnel it directly into the theater. For fifteen years Louie and I, and everyone else involved, had spent every free moment of our lives trying not only to raise money for our nonprofit theater but to raise its profile, too. We wanted to build an important theater and educational outreach program, and we wanted to let the world know we existed. Standing on that platform, seeing all those cars backed up and all those people lining the street, I saw potential donors, subscribers, and theater lovers. I wanted to capitalize on all of the attention I was getting, to seize the moment, take advantage of the opportunities this would bring us, and make sure that the theater benefited as much as possible from this moment of exposure. I wanted to be smart about it and not squander anything that would help us. Entertainment Tonight was there again, cameras rolling, capturing it all on tape.

  Artistically, the theater was thrivin
g. We were at the top of our game in terms of the quality of the plays we were performing, and our subscription base was growing steadily, but it was difficult to meet our budgets because of the never-ending battle to secure grant money and federal dollars in an ever-darkening climate for not-for-profit arts organizations. It seemed like every dollar that we used to be able to rely on now took twice the effort to secure. Sometimes I felt like Sisyphus, eternally pushing that boulder up the hill. It was hard to maintain the cash flow we so desperately needed to stabilize the company. This was not just exhausting; it was heartbreaking as well. But the staff and the board of directors did not give up; we simply kept trying harder. I continued to show up, every day, determined to keep the company going. The life of the glamorous Oscar winner began to recede when I took on the role of producing artistic director for the theater after surviving a political tussle that had erupted. It was time to get back to work.

  In spite of all there was to do at the theater, I couldn’t ignore those tremors I had felt when I won those awards for my work in Moonstruck. They had signaled a seismic shift that had taken place in my life. Even as I went back to work at the Whole Theatre, immediately engulfed by the stress of struggling for funding and the political battles raging about how to run the theater, the effects of my Oscar win were reverberating in my professional life.

  For the first time in our married life, Louie and I were able to pay off our credit cards (including the first year and a half of my daughter’s college tuition), and we realized that, with some good choices on my part, we might even be able to pay off our mortgage. After nearly thirty years of working together to keep our family afloat, this was some relief.