Melina Mercouri (Greek: Μελίνα Μερκούρη), born as Maria Amalia Mercouri (18 October 1920 – 6 March 1994) was a Greek actress, singer and politician. As an actress she made her film debut in Stella (1955) and met international success with her performances in Never on Sunday, Phaedra, Topkapi and Promise at Dawn. She won the award for Best Actress at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival, and she was also nominated for an Academy Award, three Golden Globe Awards, and two BAFTA Awards. A political activist during the Greek military junta of 1967–1974, she became a member of the Hellenic Parliament in 1977 and the first female Minister for Culture of Greece in 1981. Mercouri was the person who, in 1983, conceived and proposed the programme of the European Capital of Culture, which has been established by the European Union since 1985. She was a strong advocate for the return to Athens of the Parthenon Marbles, which were removed from the Parthenon, and are now displayed in the British Museum. Maria Amalia Mercouri was born in Athens, Greece in 1920, the daughter of Stamatis Mercouris, a former cavalry officer, member of Parliament for the Democratic Socialist Party of Greece and former Minister for Public Order of Greece, and Eirini Lappa, originated from a prominent family of Athens. Spyridon Merkouris, her paternal grandfather, was one of the most successful Mayors of Athens and played a major role in her early life. When she completed her secondary education, she was admitted to the National Theatre's Drama School after reciting a poem by Kostas Karyotakis. Dimitris Rontiris was her teacher and she graduated in 1944. Aged 21, she married her first husband, Panos Harokopos, a wealthy landowner; they divorced in 1962. After her graduation, Mercouri joined the National Theatre of Greece and played the role of Electra in Eugene O'Neill's play Mourning Becomes Electra in 1945. In 1949 she had her first major success in the theatre playing Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, written by Tennessee Williams and staged by Karolos Koun's Art Theatre. Until 1950, she also worked in the same theatre in other plays by Aldous Huxley, Arthur Miller, Philip Jordan and André Roussin. She then moved to Paris, where she appeared in boulevard plays by Jacques Deval and Marcel Achard, and met famous French playwrights and novelists such as Jean Cocteau, Jean-Paul Sartre, Colette and Françoise Sagan. In 1953, she received the Marika Kotopouli Prize and returned to Greece two years later. At the Kotopouli-Rex Theatre, Mercouri starred in plays like Macbeth by William Shakespeare and L'Alouette by Jean Anouilh Her first movie was the Greek language film Stella (1955), directed by Michael Cacoyannis (also the director of Zorba the Greek). The film received special praise at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival, where she met for first time the American film director Jules Dassin, with whom she would share her life, as they got married in 1966, and career. As a start, the next year she starred in the latter's He Who Must Die and other films by Dassin followed featuring Mercouri, such as The Law (1959).[citation needed] She became well-known to international audiences when she starred in Never on Sunday (1960), in which Dassin was the director and co-star. For this film, Mercouri received the Best Actress Award at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress and the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role. After her first major international success, she went on to star in Phaedra (1962), for which she was nominated again for the BAFTA Award and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in Motion Picture Drama. The recognition of her acting talent did not stop though, as her role in Topkapi (1964) granted her one more nomination, this time for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. Mercouri worked with other famous directors as well, such as Joseph Losey, Vittorio De Sica, Ronald Neame, Carl Foreman, Norman Jewison, and starred in films like Spanish language The Uninhibited by Juan Antonio Bardem. She continued her stage career in the Greek production of Tennessee Williams's Sweet Bird of Youth (1960), under the direction of Karolos Koun. In 1967, she played the leading role in Illya Darling (from 11 April 1967 to 13 January 1968) at Broadway, for which she was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical, while her performance in Promise at Dawn (1970) gave her another Golden Globe Award nomination. On 11 June 1967, Mercouri appeared on one of the final episodes of "What's My Line" (the venerable panel show would leave the air that fall, after seventeen years). After the panel were blindfolded, a strange man appeared on-stage and proclaimed himself "the second mystery guest". Host John Charles Daly quickly called for "the relieving crew" and said "schedule two" (a code word used on live broadcasts