Lorraine Bracco¶
At a glance¶
- Born
- October 2, 1954, Brooklyn
- Role
- Dr. Jennifer Melfi, 1999–2007
- Emmy nominations
- 4 — no wins
- Before
- Karen Hill in Goodfellas (1990) — Oscar-nominated
The choice¶
She was offered Carmela and asked for Melfi instead.
Her reasoning was straightforward and correct: she had already played the mob wife, in Goodfellas, and had been Oscar-nominated for it. Doing it again on television would be a retread. Melfi was a highly educated professional woman — something she had never played — and therefore worth doing.
It's one of the better casting decisions in television, and it was the actress's.
Melfi¶
The performance is largely reactive, which is much harder than it looks. Melfi spends seven seasons listening, and Bracco has to make each session legible: what she believes, what she suspects, what she's letting go, and how compromised she is becoming.
Her best work is "Employee of the Month" (S3E30) — the parking garage rape and its aftermath, ending with her refusing to tell Tony, who would certainly have the man killed. The whole episode comes down to one word.
She has spoken about drawing on her own long experience of therapy, undertaken during an exhausting custody battle and legal fight in the 1990s, and about how difficult the parking garage episode was to shoot.
Four nominations, no wins. It's the most conspicuous omission in the show's Emmy record.
Before and after¶
A model in Paris in her teens and twenties, then acting. Goodfellas (1990) is the pre-Sopranos landmark — Karen Hill, and an Academy Award nomination for Supporting Actress.
Also Someone to Watch Over Me, Radio Flyer, Medicine Man, and Riding in Cars with Boys.
Since the series she has moved largely into unscripted television — My Big Italian Adventure, Rizzoli & Isles — and has written openly about depression and about her financial collapse in the 1990s.
She is one of 27 actors appearing in both Goodfellas and The Sopranos.