'No one looked like me': Effie was the hero Mary Coustas needed

Effie came bursting into the Aussie consciousness with the 1987 stage play Wogs out of Work and later on screens in 1989's Acropolis Now – big hair, big voice, and all.Played by then-burgeoning comedian Mary Coustas, Effie was the second-generation Greek girl representation Australia didn't know it needed.She was the first of her kind – and despite being a little eccentric and playing into stereotypes, Aussies loved her so much they wanted more, with Effie even winning a Logie Award for Popular Comedy Personality in 1993.Watch the videos above"When I started, there was no one that was really successful in the arts that looked like me," Coustas told Broadsheet in 2023."I was just lucky enough to have a healthy enough self-esteem to think 'I'm not going to put myself in those conversations anymore. I've got to create my own stuff'."Coustas continued to play Effie in a number of spin-off shows, including Effie, Just Quietly (2001) and Greeks On The Roof (2003), delighting viewers with her larger-than-life hair, personality, and jumbled catchphrases – the most common being "Hello, good thanks" and "How embarrassment!"READ MORE: Why are people still playing with Tamagotchis?READ MORE: The sex education book generations of Aussie kids grew up withREAD MORE: In the '90s, potpourri was in every home - and then it vanishedThough she is a hairdresser by trade, she also appeared in a number of television advertisements over the years. She has even released a single, a version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Amigos Para Siempre, with Garry McDonald's character Norman Gunston in 1992, and also released her own book, Effie's Guide to Being Up Yourself, in 2003.Though work slowed down for Effie around the early 2000s, her creator Coustas was just getting started.The now 61-year-old has acted in a number of dramatic roles over the years, including in Grass Roots (2000), The Secret Life of Us (2001), voiceover work for Hercules Returns (1993), The Magic Pudding (2000), Always Greener (2001), and more.In the meantime, Coustas got married in 2005 to George Betsis, and after her first daughter Stevie was tragically born stillborn, they welcomed their second Jamie in 2013.But this wasn't the end of Effie.After the COVID lockdowns, she returned with a vengeance in her comedy show in 2021  Hello Good Thanks - Better Out Than In, still with her signature banter and crass views all delivered in a palatable stage show.In 2023, Coustas hung the wig up and went "commando", shedding the shield of the iconic character she has played for three decades with her own stage show, This is Personal.For a daily dose of 9honey, subscribe to our newsletter here.The show focused on Coustas herself, an extension of her 2013 memoir All I Know."It was a show that was built from real moments in my life that were there to illustrate something bigger for the audience," she said in 2023."It stops being my story at a certain point and it becomes a story that the audience completely connects with."You can almost sense that they've taken ownership over it and that it's triggered something that is very familiar to them."Her latest venture is her book Marypause, released in 2025, which she describes as "part reflection, part painful, part comical memoir exploring my whole physical life as a woman and young girl."FOLLOW US ON WHATSAPP HERE: Stay across all the latest in celebrity, lifestyle and opinion via our WhatsApp channel. No comments, no algorithm and nobody can see your private details.