Nominated for an Academy Award for Never on Sunday, she went on to star in such films as Topkapi, Phaedra, and Gaily, Gaily.
During the period of dictatorship in Greece from 1967 to 1974, Mercouri lived in France. When the dictatorship revoked her Greek citizenship, she said, "I was born Greek and I would die Greek. Mr. Pattakos was born a dictator and he will die as a dictator."
When democracy returned to her home country, she returned, and became first a member of the Parliament, and then Minister of Culture.
In 1971 she wrote her autobiography, I Was a Greek.