Nancy Marchand

Actor

• Born: June 19, 1928
• Place of Birth: Buffalo, New York
• Died: June 18, 2000

Contribution: Nancy Marchand was a prolific stage and screen actor best known for playing the monstrous matriarch Livia Soprano on the HBO series The Sopranos and newspaper publisher Margaret Pynchon on the series Lou Grant.

Background

Nancy Marchand was born on June 19, 1928, in Buffalo, New York. The daughter of a dentist and a piano teacher, Marchand was raised in the suburban Eggertsville section of Buffalo. Unlike most children who grow up to become actors, she was terribly shy and self-conscious about her appearance. Looking for a way to help her to become more socially comfortable, Marchand’s mother enrolled her in acting classes when she was ten years old.

Acting encouraged Marchand to open up and provided her with a creative outlet for her vivid imagination. Following her 1949 graduation from Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) in Pittsburgh, where she made her amateur stage debut in a production of The Late George Apley, Marchand headed to New York, then the epicenter of the television industry. Determined to make a name for herself as an actor, she studied at Lee Strasberg’s Actors Studio, taking lessons from one of her chosen profession’s most respected luminaries.

Career

Upon completing classes at Strasberg’s Actors Studio, Marchand joined the Falmouth Theatre in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and later, the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge. In the midst of the two seasons she spent with the Brattle, Marchand made her first professional appearance on the New York stage, playing the tavern hostess in a 1951 production of the Shakespearean comedy The Taming of the Shrew. While she was busy with her early stage work, Marchand also began to establish herself as a television actor, making her first screen appearance as Jo March on the CBS series Little Women in 1950.

Between the 1950s and the early 1970s, Marchand appeared regularly on the stage and screen. Her most noteworthy stage performance of that period came in 1960, when she played Madame Irma in the premiere of playwright Jean Genet’sThe Balcony, a role for which she won an Obie Award. On television she played various small roles in a number of daytime dramas, including Another World.

Marchand got her first big television break in 1975, when she was cast as wealthy Bostonian matriarch Mary Lassiter in Beacon Hill, an Americanized version of the British series Upstairs, Downstairs. Two years later she landed another of her most recognizable roles, that of the tyrannical newspaper publisher Margaret Pynchon on Lou Grant. During her run on Lou Grant, Marchand picked up four Emmy Awards, solidifying her reputation as a top television actor.

When she wrapped up her work on Lou Grant in 1982, Marchand went back to the stage, making appearances in productions such as Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You (1982) and The Cocktail Hour (1988). She also tended to a fledgling feature-film career, though it was never as consistent or successful as her other work. A notable film appearance was as the mayor in The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988). In the 1990s Marchand continued playing guest roles on a variety of television series, including Night Court, Coach, and Homicide: Life on the Street.

In 1999, at nearly seventy, Marchand was cast in a new HBO series about a New Jersey mob boss called The Sopranos. Playing Livia Soprano, the manipulative, coldhearted mother of the ascendant Soprano family mafioso Tony Soprano, Marchand found herself unexpectedly thrust back into the spotlight. Her performance during the show’s first two seasons culminated in two Primetime Emmy nominations and a Golden Globe win. She also shared a Screen Actors Guild award for outstanding performance by an ensemble in a drama series in 2000.

Marchand’s work as Livia, which many view as the best of her career, also turned out to be her last. Shortly after filming wrapped on the second season of The Sopranos, Marchand, who had been quietly battling lung cancer for several years, died on June 18, 2000, in Stratford, Connecticut. Because of her character’s prominence on the show and the need for Livia to have a proper exit despite the real-world circumstances, Sopranos creator David Chase gave Marchand a final curtain call in the series’ third season premiere with the help of computer-generated effects, a body double, and previously shot footage.

Impact

In a career that spanned nearly fifty years, Marchand demonstrated her incredible range and versatility as an actor and maintained a remarkably consistent body of work on the stage and the big and small screens. From her emergence as Mary Lassiter in Beacon Hill to her swan song as Livia Soprano on The Sopranos, Marchand earned the respect and admiration of fans and colleagues alike and left behind a worthy legacy.

Personal Life

Marchand met and married fellow actor Paul Sparer while they were both at the Brattle Theatre in Cambridge. They remained married until Sparer’s death just a few months before Marchand’s. They had three children, Kathryn, Rachel, and David.

Bibliography

Gussow, Mel. “Nancy Marchand, 71, Player of Imperious Roles, Dies.” New York Times. New York Times Co., 29 June 2000. Web. 8 July 2013.

Kantor, Jodi. “Livia Let Die.” Slate. Slate Group, 2 Mar. 2001. Web. 24 July 2013.

“Nancy Marchand.” Biography.com. A & E Television Networks, 2013. Web. 20 Aug. 2013.

"Nancy Marchand." IMDb, www.imdb.com/name/nm0545408/. Accessed 23 Sept. 2024.

“Nancy Marchand.” Playbill Vault. Playbill, Inc., 2013. Web. 24 July 2013.

Winfrey, Lee. “Nancy Marchand, Famed for Role as Livia Soprano, Dies at Age 71.” Philadelphia Inquirer. Interstate General Media, 20 June 2000. Web. 8 July 2013.