He had desperately wanted her to become a teacher, but she had instead become an actress, albeit an actress who taught acting, at New York University, to supplement her meagre stage income.With her actor husband, Louis Zorich, Olympia (I am using her first name throughout, because I like writing it) ran a busy but non-profit-making theatre company in Montclair, New Jersey. Occasionally, she would land a fleeting role in a television soap, "always as the crazy ethnic neighbour, screaming and yelling and carrying on". But she was considered too "ethnic", in looks and name, for a mainstream television role. "They wanted me to change my name, but that was impossible for me," she says.Occasionally, too, she would win a tiny part in a Hollywood film But working in Hollywood filled her with gloom "Even now, what I do on stage is irrelevant there. It's not as if it's dismissed, it's not even part of the equation It's not in the mix It never makes it to the table So you begin to feel disorientated I'm used to it now.

But it used to fill me with a strange malaise, because there, youth, fashion and money are what identify you as relevant."And money she did not have. Louis was a bigger earner, but when he was almost killed in a car crash, and could not work for five years, Olympia became the sole breadwinner. They had three children, and a credit-card strategy for getting their daughter through college Times were tough. They did not know that in Olympia's talent, they had huge untapped capital.One night, the writer Nora Ephron saw her in a play, and decided she would fit the part of Meryl Streep's mother in the forthcoming film version of her book Heartburn. As it turned out, Olympia's scenes were cut, but Mike Nichols, who directed Heartburn, then cast her in a play called Social Security, which the film director Norman Jewison happened to see. This little-known fiftysomething with the aristocratic nose would be perfect, reckoned Jewison, to play Cher's mother in his romantic comedy Moonstruck.And so to the Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles, on 11 April 1988, where Michael Douglas presented the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

How did she respond, I wonder, when he read out the name Olympia Dukakis? "I can't remember But I can remember what happened to Louis. He put his head down and started to cry."Similarly moved, watching the ceremony on television, was Olympia's cousin Michael, who had seen Moonstruck only the night before. He was, after all, a busy guy, the governor of Massachussetts, well on his way to becoming Democratic candidate in the 1988 presidential election."As I walked to the stage," recalls Olympia, "I remember wishing that my father could have been there, just as Michael wished his late father could be at the Atlanta convention (where he was confirmed as presidential candidate). I remember being in a limo with Michael, and we agreed that if our fathers could see us, they would both be crying. It would have been so incredible to them that within one generation he was running for president, and I received an Academy Award. At least both our mothers were alive to see it."After the ceremony, Olympia called her mother.