Anna Amalia Mercouri was born into a respectable bourgeois family. The grandfather was thirty years elected mayor of Athens. Her father Stamatis Mercouri was a deputy in the Greek Parliament and a short time interior minister of Greece. After her parents separated Melina was living with his grandfather, who their desire to become an actress, who declined. After high school she married in 1939 (elsewhere in 1941 is given) the older, wealthy businessman Pan Charakopos, went to drama school and started at the Greek National Theater in Athens with smaller gigs. She made her debut in 1944 in an avant-garde piece by Alexis Solomos. Reviewers ran, the actress was too young, too tall, too blonde, clumsy, talentless.

The marriage of the artist did not last long. 1949 Melina Mercouri went to brief appearances in the province to the capital, Paris Theater, but he soon returned to his homeland.

Her career as a film actress began Mercouri in 1955 in the Greek film Stella. The film received the Award of the American film criticism for the best foreign film of the year. A year later she filmed the movie The man must die. This was followed by The Temptress, a weak Costume dime.

The international audience it was founded in 1960 never by the film comedy sunday ...! Known in which led her future husband, Jules Dassin directed. For the role of loving whore Ilya, she won Best Actor Award of the 1960 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for the Oscar nominated as best actress. The title song, composed by Manos Hadjidakis, who was recorded by many world singers, received the award for best film music. From this film the birth of the artist was circulated with 1925th

Their international success with Sunday before! It opened the way for further large-scale productions. They celebrated success in films such as Phaedra (1962), to Mikis Theodorakis had written the music, Topkapi (1964), hot pavement Chicago (1969) and promise in the twilight (1970). The role of Ilya played Melina Mercouri also in the 1967/68 Brodway musical Ilya Darling.

During the seven-year military dictatorship in Greece from 1967 to 1974 Mercouri lived in France in exile. As the artist took a stand publicly against the regime, recognized the power from her Greek citizenship, her passport has been invalidated and Mercouri had to travel internationally a lot of difficulties.

She reacted to the deprivation of citizenship with the sentence "I was born a Greek and will die as a Greek. Mr Pattakos (the then Greek Minister of Interior) is born as a fascist. He will die a fascist. " published in your 1971 autobiography, she gave the title I was born a Greek woman. Melina Mercouri made her criticism of the unjust regime on the tours, which she led as a singer in the world, clearly.

After the overthrow of the military junta and the restoration of democracy on 24 July 1974, the artist went back to their home country. In 1977 she was first elected as PASOK deputy in the Greek Parliament. She made her final film 1978: A Dream of Passion.

In October 1981 took the newly-elected Greek Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou as a cultural minister in his cabinet. This office she held from 1981 to 1989 and then again from 1993 to 1994. Mercouri initiative on the establishment of the annual Cultural Capital of Europe back goes. She sat down among others to ensure that the Parthenon, will Fries (Elgin Marbles) returned from the British Museum in London to Greece.

In 1989, the artist who had already smoked the first cigarette of eleven years, first operated on for lung cancer. A year later she ran for the office of the Athens mayor, but lost the very close election. On 6 Melina Mercouri died in March 1994 after an operation at New York's Memorial Hospital.

Jules Dassin, who at 31 Died March 2008 in Athens, founded after the death of his wife Melina Mercouri Foundation, which holds the memories and visions of the actress, singer and politician alive. Melina Mercouri in cultural policy commitment has been awarded since the late 1990s, remembers Melina Mercouri Prize for the preservation of cultural landscapes.
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