As minister of culture 1981-89 and 1993-94, she was a tireless campaigner for the arts both at home and within the European Community, and campaigned in particular for the return of the Elgin Marbles to Greece from the UK. As an actress she gained international recognition in the film Never on Sunday 1960, in which she played an exuberantly cheerful prostitute. Fittingly, the film was set in Piraeus, the constituency which she represented in the Greek parliament from 1977 until her death. Born in Athens into a political family (her grandfather was four times elected the city's mayor), she embarked on an acting career, coming to notice outside Greece in the film Stella 1955, playing the sort of extravagantly emotional role with which she was later most readily associated. Her subsequent film career included appearances in international productions such as The Victors 1963, but was closely associated with director Jules Dassin, her husband from 1966. Their films together included a histrionic modern-dress version of Phaedra 1962 and the commercially successful comedy-thriller Topkapi 1964. Mercouri was in the USA at the time of the 1967 military coup in Greece and was stripped of her nationality. She campaigned vocally against the colonels' regime, and in 1977, three years after their fall, was elected to parliament for Andreas Papandreou's PASOK party. When PASOK took power, she was appointed culture minister, and took up in particular the cause of seeking the return to Greece from the UK of the Elgin Marbles - or, as she preferred to term them, the Parthenon Marbles.
