I met her in 1958 in Dallas. She was only 35 years old and I was 11. Of course, in the eyes of an eleven-year-old, a 35-year-old woman seems very grown-up. And when that woman is Maria Callas, just imagine how tall and imposing she appeared to me. I was in Dallas with my grandmother and her husband, whom I called grandpa. My grandfather was directing Callas in Medea by Ceurubini. I knew Medea from my grandmother. She had played her many times at Epidaurus, in productions directed by my grandfather. My grandmother, Katina Paxinou, was the most legendary post-war actress of Greece. Along with her husband Alexis Minotis, they were the most important performers of ancient tragedy and the classical European repertoire in our country. In 1939, they were in London with the National Theatre of Greece. Paxinou played Sophocles' Electra and Minotis played Shakespeare's Hamlet. The reception from the British audience was so enthusiastic that they invited Paxinou to perform Ibsen's Ghosts at the Duchess Theatre the following year. But the following year was 1940. With the outbreak of war, my grandmother found herself performing Ghosts in bombed-out London and was stranded there.

In 1941, in her attempt to leave England, she secretly boarded a destroyer. The destroyer was sunk by a German submarine, and she was stranded for a week in the middle of the Atlantic on a lifeboat with a dozen sailors. They were rescued by an American ship, and a few days later, Paxinou found herself alone, without papers, without money, and without knowing anyone, in New York. How this woman went from that situation to winning an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for Pilar in For Whom the Bell Tolls in 1943 is a story I must tell another time. Thanks to my grandmother, I met great personalities of the arts. From Gary Cooper, Marilyn Monroe, and Sophia Loren to Lucino Visconti, Elia Kazan, and Jean Renoir. Because from 1942 to 1952, Paxinou stayed in America and made many films until she decided to return to Greece to play the major theatrical roles she longed for, in her language.