Nancy Marchand

The Woman Who Didn't Need to Smile

Nancy Marchand auditioned for The Sopranos with a plastic bag in hand and the attitude of someone who no longer has anything to prove. David Chase was looking for a woman who could embody a passive, almost unbearable cruelty. The moment she walked in, he knew the role of Livia Soprano already had its owner, because Marchand didn't project the forced warmth of the grandmothers on American television.

She was born in Buffalo in 1928 and grew up in an environment where acting was not a priority. But her extreme shyness pushed her toward the stage as a form of therapy. In 1951, she made her Broadway debut in The Taming of the Shrew, and from that moment on her name became tied to the New York stage.

Theater was his true home.

During the 1950s and 1960s, she took part in live television drama programs such as The Philco Television Playhouse. In 1953, she played Clara in the original version of Marty (a role Betsy Blair later played in the film). Her technical training was therefore remarkably precise when the time came to make the leap to mass fame.

Running the Newsroom and the Four Emmy Awards

Before becoming television's most feared mother, Nancy Marchand had already won four Emmy Awards for her role in Lou Grant. Between 1977 and 1982, she played Margaret Pynchon, the owner of the newspaper Los Angeles Tribune. Her character was a powerful woman in a man's world, but she avoided any trace of feminist caricature or gratuitous aggressiveness.

And she made it happen.

Her relationship with actor Paul Sparer lasted 48 years, until his death in 1999. They worked together on numerous occasions and formed one of the most stable couples in the New York theater scene. But Marchand always kept a careful distance from the press and the Hollywood spotlight. She preferred the discipline of rehearsals to the red carpet.

Her film appearances were more spaced out but always effective. In 1991, she appeared in the comedy The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear, playing the city's mayor. She also worked under Sydney Pollack in the remake of Sabrina, shot in 1995. Her physical presence (she was a tall woman with severe features) often determined the kind of scripts that landed in her mailbox.

Livia Soprano's Last Will

When David Chase hired her to play Tony Soprano's mother, the actress was already ill. She had lung cancer and emphysema, but that didn't stop her from shooting the first two seasons of the series with an intensity that terrified James Gandolfini himself. The dynamic between them was built on absolute mutual respect.

Livia Soprano was not a textbook villain. She was a woman who used victimhood as a weapon of mass destruction. Marchand could make viewers feel a mix of pity and revulsion without barely moving a muscle in her face. In 1999, she won the Golden Globe for this role, proving that her power to make an impact was still intact at 71 years old.

But her health deteriorated sharply during the break between the second and third seasons.

Nancy Marchand died on June 18, 2000, in Stratford, Connecticut. Her death forced the writers to completely rewrite the series' storyline. The production had to spend 250,000 dollars on digital retouching technology to insert her face into a final scene with her fictional son before the character disappeared from the plot for good.