Nancy Marchand is an award-winning actress, best known to television viewers for playing prominent supporting roles in "Lou Grant" and "The Sopranos". She is also a Tony Award nominated actress with an extensive Broadway resume.
Born June 19, 1928, in Buffalo New York, she attended Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie Mellon University). Upon graduation, she took to a theatre career. She debuted in 1951, in the play "The Taming of the Shrew".
She played Margaret Pynchon, the newspaper publisher in the series "Lou Grant", and won four Emmys in that role. She has also appeared in both daytime soap operas and guest-starred in evening television programs, as well as appearing in a handful of feature films.
Her final role was as Tony Soprano's mother in "The Sopranos", a role which won her a Golden Globe award.
On Cheers, she played the role of Hester Crane. She did not reprise the role in the spinoff "Frasier". The character was deceased when that series started, but the character appeared in flashbacks. Another actress played the role.
She passed away June 18, 2000, in Stratford, Connectitut. Her character was written out of "The Sopranos" when she died.
She was married to Paul Sparer, an actor, until he passed away in 1999. They had three children together.