Michael Constantine played Gus, the father of Nia Vardalos’ Toula Portokalos in “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” was by far the highest-grossing romantic comedy of all time.
The following written content by Carmel Dagan
Michael Constantine, who played Gus, the father of Nia Vardalos’ Toula Portokalos in “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” by far the highest-grossing romantic comedy of all time, died on Aug. 31. He was 94.
Constantine’s agent confirmed the news of his death to Variety. He died of natural causes.
“My Big Fat Greek Wedding” scored a domestic gross of $241 million in 2002; No. 2 on the list is “What Women Want” with $183 million. The film drew a SAG Awards nomination for outstanding performance by the cast of a theatrical motion picture.
As Roger Ebert recounted, Constantine’s Gus “specializes in finding the Greek root for any word (even ‘kimono’), and delivers a toast in which he explains that ‘Miller’ goes back to the Greek word for apple, and ‘Portokalos’ is based on the Greek word for oranges, and so, he concludes triumphantly, ‘In the end, we’re all fruits.’ ”
Variety said: “Constantine fares best as a patriarch whose staunch traditionalism is at once dim-bulb and big-hearted.”
Constantine reprised his role in a short-lived CBS series that also starred Vardalos and Lainie Kazan in 2003, “My Big Fat Greek Life,” and the 2016 film sequel, “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2,” in which the wedding was that of Gus and Kazan’s Maria after a procedural defect in their original nuptials in Greece is uncovered, necessitating another ceremony.
In a review of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2,” the Los Angeles Times said, “Constantine delivers an appealing mixture of bravado and bumbling as Gus, a man claiming cultural superiority who doesn’t know how to use a computer mouse. According to Gus, the Greeks invented everything, even Italy, and now he’s on an Internet quest to confirm that he is a direct descendant of Alexander the Great. In a sequence that will feel familiar to anyone who has ever introduced an older relative to Google, this quest will take a village.”
Before the “Big Fat Greek Wedding” phenomenon, Constantine was best known as a television actor who played principal Seymour Kaufman on James L. Brooks’ then-hip-for-TV high school comedy “Room 222,” which ran on ABC from 1969-74 and also starred Lloyd Haynes as teacher Pete Dixon; Denise Nicholas as school counselor Liz McIntyre; and Karen Valentine as student teacher Alice Johnson. Read more from Variety.
