What Does The Cast Of Moonstruck Look Like Today?

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Norman Jewison's romantic comedy "Moonstruck" turns 35 in December 2022. The story of a colorful Italian-American family in Brooklyn was the brainchild of screenwriter John Patrick Shanley, whose hilarious script won an Academy Award for best original screenplay.

Cher stars as Loretta Castorini, a lonely widowed bookkeeper. Now in her late 30s and childless, she is dating a dolt named Johnny Cammareri (Danny Aiello), who proposes marriage. Feeling her options are limited, she agrees to marry him, but he first must fly to Sicily to be at the bedside of his dying mother. He has one request for Loretta: to invite his estranged younger brother Ronny (Nicolas Cage) to their wedding. Ronny, who bakes bread for a living, can never forgive Johnny for making him look the wrong way one day, resulting in him losing his hand in a bread slicer. Loretta and Ronny end up falling in love as confusion reigns for her, her disenchanted mother and womanizing father, and an assorted bunch of neurotic relatives entranced by the giant moon that looms over them all.

"Moonstruck" was a hit with both audiences and critics. Gene Siskel called it "one of the funniest pictures to come out in quite some time," per the Chicago Tribune. The film won three Oscars, including leading actress for Cher. We take a look at the actors who helped make the picture an enduring comedy classic, where they are now, and remember those cast members who are no longer with us.

A longtime stage and character actor, Olympia Dukakis became a star at age 56 as the world-weary matriarch of the eccentric Castorini family in "Moonstruck." Her performance won her an Oscar for best supporting actress. Dukakis said on "George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight," "'Moonstruck' was the first one. It's like somebody said, 'Look. She waited all these years. Let's give her something good!' It was incredible, and then that changed my whole life."

Rose Castorini has seen it all. She suspects her husband Cosmo (Vincent Gardenia) is seeing another woman and spends a great deal of the movie pondering why men cheat. "Why would a man need more than one woman?" she asks her daughter's fiance (Danny Aiello). When he offers that it may be because they are afraid of death, she reaches an odd catharsis. This leads to one of the film's funniest moments when she tells Cosmo, "I just want you to know no matter what you do you're gonna die just like everybody else."

Dukakis went on to appear in major motion pictures such as the much-loved "Steel Magnolias," "Dad," "Look Who's Talking," and "The Cemetery Club." She received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on May 24, 2013. A documentary about her life, "Olympia," appeared in the DOC NYC Festival in 2018. Dukakis married actor Louis Zorich in 1962, with whom she had three children. Zorich died in 2018. Dukakis died in Manhattan on May 1, 2021 at age 89 after many months of illness, per The Hollywood Reporter.

A performer with a respectable theatre background, Julie Bovasso was best known for playing John Travolta's mother in "Saturday Night Fever" (she reprised the role in the film's 1983 sequel "Staying Alive"). Other film credits include Sidney Lumet's "The Verdict," Alan Alda's "Betsy's Wedding," and "My Blue Heaven" with Steve Martin and Rick Moranis. A Brooklyn native herself, she was also an acting and dialect coach who helped Cher and Olympia Dukakis perfect their Brooklyn accents in "Moonstruck" (she is credited as dialogue coach).

Bovasso played Loretta's aunt Rita Cappomaggi, who, with her husband Raymond (Louis Guss), runs an Italian specialty food market. Loretta does the books for her aunt and uncle, and in one of the film's final scenes in the kitchen of Loretta's parents' home, Rita and Raymond show up during breakfast with very solemn looks on their faces. They ask Loretta if there is something she needs to tell them. Loretta then suddenly realizes she forgot to make a big bank deposit for them. Everyone is relieved, with Raymond exclaiming, "We never suspected you," intimating that the idea that Loretta ran off with the cash had crossed their minds.

Bovasso died in Manhattan on September 14, 1991 at age 61. The cause was cancer, according to The New York Times.

John Mahoney co-starred in another Cher movie, "Suspect," as a judge the same year "Moonstruck" came out. As Perry, a college professor going through a midlife crisis, Mahoney has a brief flirtation with Rose Castorini (Olympia Dukakis) over dinner. He is a regular diner at the Grand Ticino, a charming Italian bistro where the Castorini family is known. Usually in the company of one of his attractive female students, he more often than not ends up eating alone. 

While Rose is having dinner solo, Perry's student makes a scene and throws a glass of water in his face before storming out. He apologizes to Rose, who comments, "She was just too young for you." After Perry rudely asks Rose her age, he apologizes and Rose sheepishly asks him if he'd like to join her. Their dinner conversation is sweet, enlightening, funny, and one of the film's most charming subplots as Rose tries to get an answer to the burning question, "Why do men chase women?"

Mahoney had an extensive theater background. He was part of Chicago's famed Steppenwolf Theatre Company, and on Broadway won a Tony Award for "The House of Blue Leaves." He would later gain wide recognition for playing the father of the Crane brothers on "Frasier" for 11 seasons. The U.K.-born Mahoney died February 4, 2018, in his beloved "adopted hometown of Chicago" due to complications from cancer, per The Hollywood Reporter. He was 77. Mahoney never married or had children, and claimed he was happy among friends or alone.