Biography
With her thick Brooklyn accent, it's no surprise that Lorraine Bracco has 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 mobster Henry Hill's wife in
Martin Scorsese's
Goodfellas, making her a full-blown movie star overnight. 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.Then in 1999, when Bracco got the stellar role of Dr. Jennifer Melfi on the hit HBO series
The Sopranos. Bracco stayed with the series until 2007, playing the understated psychiatrist of mob boss Tony Soprano, and picking up several Emmy, Golden Globe, and Screen Actors Guild awards over the years. The show kept her busy, but the actress continued to pursue other projects, playing a nervous mother in
Penny Marshall's
Riding in Cars With Boys , and taking on a recurring role on the series
Lipstick Jungle. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide