Mary Coustas' father didn't live to see her success. Since having a baby at 49, she's wary of history repeating.

Content warning: The following contains discussion of pregnancy loss.

Australia has watched Mary Coustas for more than three decades. 

We watched her in the pioneering comedy production Wogs Out of Work back in the late ‘80s. We watched her in the sitcom Acropolis Rising, in which she played Effie — a second-generation Greek Australian with towering confidence and “hairs” to match. We watched as she cemented Effie's status as one of the most quotable characters in the Aussie comedy canon (“Hello, good thanks.” “How embarrassment.” “Beauty: it’s a curse, and I’ve got it.”). And now we watch as Mary’s one-woman show, This Is Personal, earns critical acclaim.

Coustas as Effie. Image: supplied. 

But one of the most important people in Mary’s life hasn’t been there to see it all unfold. Her father, a person so integral to her success, died a week before her career began to soar.

Now, speaking to Mamamia’s No Filter podcast, the comedian said that since she became a mother at the age of 49, she’s been worried that history may repeat itself.

Mary's "complicated reality".

Mary and her husband, George Betsis, welcomed their daughter, Jamie, into the world in November 2013 after a decade of fertility struggles. Mary underwent dozens of rounds of IVF, endured pregnancy loss, and the stillbirth of their first child (a little girl named Stevie) before she was able to bring Jamie home.

“Being a late-in-life mother was not the ideal, it was not the objective,” Mary said. “It was just the reality.”

There are complexities to that reality that she has to face. Including that she may not live long enough to see some of the big moments in her daughter’s life.

“That’s scary,” she said. “We spend a lifetime trying to evolve beyond the things we inherit, the things that traumatise us. And yet here I am standing in my father's shoes, watching history repeat.”

Mary’s father had suffered a massive heart attack the year before she was born.

His ill-health hung over her childhood like an anvil. In her 2013 memoir, All I Know, Mary wrote that she was always conscious of the fact that he — the person who mattered most to her — “could die any moment”. She couldn’t trust in her future, in things remaining how they were.

He passed away on 4 October, 1987, at the age of 59.

Coustas' father. Image: supplied. 

Mary wrote that he “must have arrived in heaven and hit the phones with a vengeance”, because within a matter of days, the career that he’d empowered her to chase started to materialise. 

She joined the cast of Wogs Out of Work, a hugely popular comedy stage show written by Nick Giannopoulos, Simon Palomares and Maria Portesi, which served as a mouthpiece for a (in Mary’s words) “vast, neglected and hungry audience” of migrant families. That in turn went on to birth Acropolis Now, the show that made Mary and her iconic character, Effie, a household name.

All these years later, Mary still carries with her the lessons her father taught her: to be nonjudgmental, to not rely on other people to make your dreams come true, to use your bright mind, to be present.

It’s these lessons and more that Mary hopes to impart to her daughter. 

“I try to plant seeds now, nice and early, for things that I think would serve her long term,” she said. “I try to make her as independent as possible, so that she can take charge.”

Of course, Mary worries about the future, about the fact that Jamie may have to spend much of her adult life without a mother to guide her. But she tries to anchor herself somewhere between realism and optimism.

“We've got to look at things and ultimately run with what we have,” she said. “So I try to make it work as much as I can. I'm energetic, I'm passionate, I'm present with my daughter.”

Watch Mary Coustas on this week's episode of No Filter below. 

After all, even though her relationship with her father was cut short, it was one of the most meaningful of her life. And that, she said, makes her far more fortunate than many.

“Would I have preferred a parent that lived a longer life? Not if I didn't have him,” she said. “I had gold. I had access to a mint that just kept giving me all this currency. 

“I wouldn't have swapped him for anyone.”

If you or someone in your life has experienced the loss of a pregnancy or newborn, support is available. Call Sands on 1300 308 307 or visit the website.

Images supplied.