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Early life

Marchand was born in 1928 in Buffalo, New York, the only child of Dr. Raymond Louis Marchand, a dentist, and his wife, Marjorie Freeman, a piano teacher.² Her great-grandfather Louis Marchand, a stone cutter, emigrated from France.³ She grew up in the adjacent hamlet of Eggertsville, New York.⁴ She attended Amherst High School, and studied acting at the Studio Theatre School in Buffalo, taking two buses to make the trip.⁵⁶ She graduated from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1949⁷ and studied theater at the Herbert Berghof Studio⁸ in New York City.

Career

Marchand made her first professional stage appearance in 1946 in The Late George Apley in Ogunquit, Maine.⁹ She made her Broadway debut in The Taming of the Shrew in 1951. She won a Distinguished Performance Obie Award for The Balcony, and she was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play for The White Liars & Black Comedy. She was nominated four times for the Drama Desk Award, winning for Morning's at Seven. She won a second Obie for her performance in A. R. Gurney's The Cocktail Hour.

Marchand originated the roles of Vinnie Phillips on the CBS soap opera Love of Life and Theresa Lamonte on the NBC soap opera Another World. She also starred as matriarch Edith Cushing on Lovers and Friends, a short-lived soap opera.

Marchand was renowned for her roles as patrician newspaper publisher Margaret Pynchon on Lou Grant, winning four Emmy Awards as Best Supporting Actress in a Dramatic Series, and as matriarch Livia Soprano, mother of Tony Soprano on the HBO series The Sopranos, which earned her a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series, as well as two Emmy Award nominations.¹⁰

She appeared in many anthology series in the early days of television, including The Philco Television Playhouse (on which she starred in Marty opposite Rod Steiger), Kraft Television Theatre, Studio One, and Playhouse 90. Additional television credits include The Law and Mr. Jones, Spenser: For Hire, Law & Order, Homicide: Life on the Street, Coach, and Night Court.

Marchand's feature film credits included The Bachelor Party, Ladybug Ladybug, Me, Natalie, Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon, The Hospital, The Bostonians, From the Hip, Jefferson in Paris, Brain Donors, Reckless, The Naked Gun, Sabrina and Dear God.

Personal life

Marchand was married to actor Paul Sparer. He died in 1999 from cancer at age 75. The couple had three children: Katie, David, and Rachel, and seven grandchildren.¹¹

Marchand suffered from lung cancer, emphysema, and COPD. She died on June 18, 2000, a day before her 72nd birthday, in Stratford, Connecticut.¹² She was posthumously inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.¹³ Marchand's death occurred between Seasons 2 and 3 of The Sopranos, before a plot line prominently involving her character was resolved. Her death was written into the plot, and one final scene was created for her using computer-generated imagery, which was a new technology at the time, together with outtakes from previous seasons.¹⁴

Filmography

Film

Television

Theatre

Awards and nominations

External links

• Nancy Marchand at the Internet Broadway Database
• Nancy Marchand at IMDb
• Nancy Marchand at the Internet Off-Broadway Database

References

1. "Actress Nancy Marchand, Buffalo Natives, Dies". The Buffalo News. June 20, 2000. p. 7. Retrieved 14 August 2024. https://www.newspapers.com/image/878174431/?article=293859ec-f5ae-4dde-bd6e-429da18026a2&terms=nancy%20marchand ↩

2. "Dr. Marchand". The Buffalo News. March 28, 1981. p. 24. Retrieved August 14, 2024. https://www.newspapers.com/image/874003082/?article=3aacd0e5-6e0c-4cb7-8da9-07af410913ba&focus=0.5026465,0.7141926,0.61868584,0.8132451&xid=3355 ↩

3. 1870 United States census, 1920 United States census /wiki/1870_United_States_census ↩

4. "Actress Nancy Marchand, Buffalo Natives, Dies". The Buffalo News. June 20, 2000. p. 7. Retrieved 14 August 2024. https://www.newspapers.com/image/878174431/?article=293859ec-f5ae-4dde-bd6e-429da18026a2&terms=nancy%20marchand ↩

5. "Standing By Studio Arena, Nancy Marchand Credits Her Success to Her Hometown Theater". Buffalo News. June 2, 1997. https://buffalonews.com/news/standing-by-studio-arena-nancy-marchand-credits-her-success-to-her-hometown-theater/article_6e1e730e-2f73-5215-949c-8886cd7f44c6.html ↩

6. Chase, Anthony (April 30, 1991). "Nancy Marchand's Stage of Life". Buffalo News. https://buffalonews.com/news/nancy-marchands-stage-of-life-the-buffalo-bred-actress-returns-for-role-in-gurneys-children/article_db337f31-49dd-5c62-b27d-781ed96dbb95.html ↩

7. "Carnegie Mellon's Notable Alumni" (PDF). Carnegie Mellon University. Archived from the original (PDF) on October 15, 2013. https://web.archive.org/web/20131015173607/http://www.alumni.cmu.edu/s/1410/images/editor_documents/alumnirelations/about/notable/notable-alumni.pdf ↩

8. "Alumni". HB Studio. https://hbstudio.org/about-hb-studio/alumni/ ↩

9. "Standing By Studio Arena". Buffalo News. June 2, 1997. https://buffalonews.com/news/standing-by-studio-arena-nancy-marchand-credits-her-success-to-her-hometown-theater/article_6e1e730e-2f73-5215-949c-8886cd7f44c6.html ↩

10. "Actress Nancy Marchand, Buffalo Natives, Dies". The Buffalo News. June 20, 2000. p. 7. Retrieved 14 August 2024. https://www.newspapers.com/image/878174431/?article=293859ec-f5ae-4dde-bd6e-429da18026a2&terms=nancy%20marchand ↩

11. Kaplan, Don (June 20, 2000). "'Sopranos' mom loses her fight for life". New York Post. Archived from the original on July 3, 2020. Retrieved June 30, 2020. https://web.archive.org/web/20200703024638/https://nypost.com/2000/06/20/sopranos-mom-loses-her-fight-for-life/ ↩

12. Gussow, Mel. (The New York Times). "Obituaries: Nancy Marchand, Actress Known for 'Lou Grant,' 'Sopranos'". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. June 2, 2000. p. B7. Retrieved July 23, 2023. https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=ItNRAAAAIBAJ&sjid=yG8DAAAAIBAJ&pg=6728%2C8050884 ↩

13. Rawson, Christopher (February 1, 2001). "Theater family comes together to celebrate Hall of Fame honorees". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Archived from the original on February 22, 2014. Retrieved February 12, 2014. https://web.archive.org/web/20140222024552/http://old.post-gazette.com/magazine/20010201people3.asp ↩

14. Johnson, Allan (March 4, 2001). "How Livia Was Able to Return This Season". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved September 7, 2023. https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2001-03-04-0103040491-story.html ↩

15. "Nancy Marchand". Broadway Internet Database. Retrieved September 5, 2023. https://www.ibdb.com/broadway-cast-staff/nancy-marchand-51377 ↩