Off camera, Nancy Marchand was nothing like Livia, the conniving matriarch of a mob family she played on the hit television series "The Sopranos."
For that matter, the Emmy-winning actress from Buffalo was totally unlike Mrs. Pynchon, the patrician publisher she portrayed from 1979 to 1982 on another popular TV series, "Lou Grant."
Conniving and patrician are words that just didn't fit the real Nancy Marchand, who died of lung cancer Sunday (June 18, 2000) in her Stratford, Conn., home, a day before her 72nd birthday.
A shy woman who once said she was comfortable on stage but uneasy meeting people one-on-one, she expressed genuine humility and gratitude five years ago when she was inducted into the Western New York Entertainment Hall of Fame at Shea's Performing Arts Center.
In 1999, on the eve of the first season of "The Sopranos" on Home Box Office, Marchand recalled she was "a real klutz" as a child growing up in Eggertsville, the daughter of a dentist and a piano teacher:
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"It was because my mind was going all the time with adventures that I made up. My mother didn't realize what I was doing, that I was making up all these adventures about myself. She sent me to the Studio Theatre School to take lessons to see if I couldn't make myself socially more acceptable.
"Then I discovered people wrote adventures, and you could learn them and perform them. I just got so excited and realized that was what I was going to do all my life."
In another interview, two years earlier, she remembered that as a teenager in the 1940s she "spent a lot of time standing in the cold and rain at bus stops" on the way from Eggertsville to acting class on the West Side.
"I had to take the bus down Main Street, transfer to Delavan Avenue and then walk two blocks to the school at Lafayette Avenue and Hoyt Street," she said. After class, she took the same tedious route in the other direction. "But I loved acting so much, I was willing to spend the whole day riding the bus," she said.
"Once you got to the Studio School, everything was copacetic," added Marchand, who began learning her craft under Jane M. Keeler, the Buffalo theater legend who founded the Studio School with Lars Potter.
While Marchand excelled in a variety of stage roles, she got most of her acclaim for her TV work -- four consecutive Emmys while on "Lou Grant," from 1979 through 1982, and a nomination for her role on "The Sopranos."
Marchand showed no fear as Livia Soprano or Mrs. Pynchon. Both women were in control -- Livia of a sprawling mobster family, Mrs. Pynchon of the newspaper where the gruff Grant, played by Ed Asner, was city editor.
Livia was sullen, self-pitying and Machiavellian. She seemed intent upon destroying her son, Tony, played by James Gandolfini, conspiring with her brother-in-law, Tony's underhanded rival for the family business.
As Mrs. Pynchon, Marchand was a regal presence -- strong enough to step on Lou Grant's toes, if it came to that -- but still involved in the daily operation of her mythical Los Angeles Tribune.
Marchand had continued to work on "The Sopranos" even after her diagnosis of lung cancer.
Her husband of 47 years, Paul Sparer, died in November, also of cancer.
On film, Marchand appeared in "Dear God" with Greg Kinnear; the 1995 remake of "Sabrina"; "Regarding Henry"; and the first of the "Naked Gun" comedies, among many others.
Her Broadway and off-Broadway credits were lengthy, including a Tony-nominated performance in "White Liars and Black Comedy" and Obie-winning roles in "The Cocktail Hour" and "The Balcony."
She was considered a leading interpreter of plays by A.R. Gurney, the Buffalo native and fellow member of the Western New York Entertainment Hall of Fame, who wrote "The Cocktail Hour."
The Amherst High School graduate attended Carnegie Tech before embarking on her storied career. The actress is survived by three children, David, Kathryn and Rachel, and seven grandchildren.
