Cher, Sally Field, and George Takei are
among the celebrities mourning the death of actress and LGBT ally
Olympia Dukakis.
Dukakis' death was made public on
Saturday. She was 89.
“Olympia Dukakis Was an Amazing
Academy Award Winning Actress,” Cher wrote on Twitter. “Olympia
Played My Mom In Moonstruck, & Even Though Her Part was That Of a
Suffering Wife, We [laughed] ALL The Time.”
“She Would Tell Me How MUCH She Loved
Louis, Her Handsome Talented Husband. I Talked To Her 3Wks Ago. Rip
Dear One,” she said.
Sally Field starred opposite Dukakis in
Steel Magnolias.
“What can I say but I loved her?”
Field tweeted. “Everyone loved her. She was a gift..unique and
talented and one of a kind. Rest in peace my friend Olympia.”
In promoting Olympia, a
documentary film about her career released in the United States in
2020, Dukakis, who played a transgender character in the Tales of
the City series, said that she's had a “mutual love affair”
with the LGBT community.
“It’s been a mutual love affair,”
she
told Instinct
magazine. “One of my best friends was gay. He died during the
early AIDS epidemic and that left me angry. I couldn’t understand
how the world we lived in would turn a blind eye to people’s
suffering. When they offered me the part of Anna Madrigal in Tales
of the City, and I saw the humanity and complexity that Armistead
Maupin gave this character, I knew I wanted to do it. I had no idea
it was going to touch so many people, but I knew that it was a once
in a lifetime opportunity because these kinds of projects don’t
come often.”
When asked, “What message do you have
for the LGBTQ community?” Dukakis answered: “Stand in your truth.
Never let anyone intimidate you. Continue the work to move the
conversation forward, especially now with the assault on the trans
community. It’s important to remember that no matter how hard
others may try to stop progress, they will never succeed. They might
slow it down, but justice always prevails.”
Dukakis' brother, Apollo, who announced
her death on Facebook, said that she had been ill for some time but
did not reveal the cause of her death.
Out actor George Takei (Star Trek)
also remembered Dukakis.
“Olympia Dukakis has departed our
company,” he tweeted. “We were Monstruck by her, as she told us
great Tales of the City. A true Steel Magnolia within a more common
forest. Ah, what a life force, her later years her best. Rest now
among the heavens, Olympia.”