Melina Mercouri

UNESCO Courier, Dec, 1991 by Bahgat Elnadi, Adel Rifaat

* You were very young when you first became interested in the theatre. Tell us something about the actor's craft. What did Greek society at that time, and your own family, think about the stage?

-- My family has been involved in politics for generations. My grandfather, who adored me and whom I adored, was mayor of Athens for more than twenty years. The house was always full, for at that time the mayor of Athens was as powerful as a minister, maybe even more so. That was theatre for me. I had a stage, an audience, partners, dialogues, sometimes even long tirades.

* Were there women in politics at that time?

-- No. Politics was for men. But when I was a child, I often used to imagine what it would be like to be in my grandfather's shoes. Politics didn't enter into it, I understood nothing about that. What mattered was the drama, the speeches . . . and the audience.

So the theatre was a part of me from my early years. And then my grandfather often took me with him to see plays. I felt at home there, even though I couldn't follow the plots. In some ways it was like being at home.

Even when I was very young, I was a rebel. When I was seven or eight I used to escape from the house and go off with a friend to the cinema or to a cafe to listen to music. Once we got dressed up in our mothers' finery and went to a sailors' tavern, where they served tea and played music. In all innocence, we got up and danced. We just enjoyed performing, putting on a show and being applauded. My mother soon put an end to that little adventure. A woman who had seen us tipped her off, and she came looking for me. She took me back home and severely punished me. Never mind. I had made my decision. I wanted to go on the stage. I wanted applause! Obviously, my parents didn't see things in the same way.

* Why not? Was the life of an actor or actress considered disreputable?

-- No. But for the Athenian upper middle class to which I belonged, it wasn't done to go on the boards, even to play a heroine of Sophocles or Euripides. What's more, there was no security in the artist's life. One day you could be rolling in money and the next you could be starving. For children of good family, the theatre was risky.

I don't think my parents thought there was anything dishonourable about acting. They would have had no objection if they could have been certain that I would be a success! They were behind me throughout my political and artistic career. It would certainly have been the same with my grandfather, if he hadn't done me the dirty trick of dying in the meantime.

* If things were as you describe them, how did you set about overcoming the obstacle?

-- I got married at seventeen! To a wealthy aristocrat who had studied at Cambridge University. Politically he was conservative, not to say reactionary, but he had extremely liberal ideas on the role of women. He didn't try to turn me into a submissive wife. He didn't even make me take his name, as was normal at the time. I stayed Melina Mercouri, for him and for everyone he introduced me to. That's how I broke free from my family and how I was able to study and prepare for the audition that would get me into the Drama School of the National Theatre of Greece.

* Then came the war and the Occupation. Could you describe what it was like? Or is it something you prefer not to talk about?

-- Why shouldn't I talk about it? We had three years of Occupation. I saw swollen bellies and people dying of hunger. I saw carts going by with the corpses of men and women piled up on them like carcasses of cattle. I saw people living from day to day, not knowing what tomorrow would bring. I saw the continual uncertainty drive some to heroic acts of resistance and others to collaboration. Nobody in my family collaborated with the enemy. My younger brother was in the Resistance. Not me. It's the one thing I really regret. But it wasn't through lack of courage or fear of death.

One day I was in a tavern with three friends when three SS men entered. They were dead drunk. They asked us to sit at their table. When we didn't move, one of them drew a revolver. My three friends got up then and went over to join them. I don't know what got into me because my head was empty, but I didn't move. The SS man was furious, he kept on at me. He pointed the pistol and started counting. "Ein, zwei, drei...." I still didn't move. I wasn't scared. He fired, and the glass in front of me shattered. Now I was furious, and I got up and started shouting insults at him. I never considered that he might keep on firing. I wasn't thinking of anything. Then the military police arrived and dragged him out of the tavern.

I didn't know what fear was. Even so, I didn't join the Resistance. When I think about it now, I wonder if the main reason wasn't my burning ambition to be an actress! At drama school from two till six every day, the outside world ceased to exist. There was no more Occupation, no more Germans, no more Melina even. There was only Marguerite, Ophelia, la Locadiera, Electra. And then there was the sublime Dimitris Rondiris, our teacher. He demanded from us a commitment to the theatre as total as his own. His Oresteia remains the greatest theatrical experience of my life.