Lorraine Bracco

Lorraine Bracco

With her thick Brooklyn accent, it's no surprise that Lorraine Bracco was born and raised in a working-class neighborhood of New York City, but her twenties were not as predictable. Relocating to Europe, she spent several years living in France as a fashion model and working in radio, TV commercials, and films. She appeared in the Lina Wertmuller crime thriller Un Complicato Intrigo Di Donne, Vicoli E Delitti along with American actor Harvey Keitel, to whom she would be married for ten years. Moving back to New York to study acting with Stella Adler and the Actor's Studio, she made her U.S. debut as a hooker in The Pick-Up Artist (also with Keitel) and later starred as a Queens housewife in Ridley Scott's Someone to Watch Over Me. After a couple roles in Sing and The Dream Team, she received an Oscar nomination for her work as a mobster's wife in Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas. She continued working in features for the remainder of the '90s, most notably opposite Sean Connery in Medicine Man, as the whip-cracking Delores Del Rio in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, and as Leonardo DiCaprio's long-suffering mother in The Basketball Diaries. She briefly turned to TV movies until 1999, when she got the stellar role of Dr. Jennifer Melfi on the hit HBO series The Sopranos. As the understated psychiatrist of mob boss Tony Soprano, Bracco won several Emmy, Golden Globe, and Screen Actors Guild awards. In 2001, she played a nervous mother in Penny Marshall's Riding in Cars With Boys before ending her marriage to actor Edward James Olmos. In 2003, she finished work on the comedy drama Max & Grace, starring fellow New York native Natasha Lyonne. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide