Lorraine Bracco

Lorraine Bracco is an American actress born on October 2, 1954, in the Bay Ridge neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. She grew up in Hicksville, New York, on Long Island, where she attended and graduated from Hicksville High School in 1972. Her father, Salvatore S. Bracco Sr., was of Italian descent, and her mother, Eileen, was born in England with some French ancestry; the two met during World War II and married in Andover in 1946. Bracco has a sister, actress Elizabeth Bracco, and a brother, Salvatore Jr.

Bracco relocated to France in 1974, where she worked as a fashion model for Jean-Paul Gaultier for approximately a decade. During that period she also worked as a disc jockey for Radio Luxembourg and appeared in several French and Italian-language films, including Duos sur canapé (1979) and a small part in Lina Wertmüller's Camorra. Her English-language film debut came with The Pick-up Artist (1987), followed by Someone to Watch Over Me (1987), Sing (1989), and The Dream Team (1989). She also appeared in the Crime Story episode "Hide and Go Thief" during the series' first season.

Her breakthrough came with Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas (1990), in which she portrayed Karen Hill, the wife of mobster Henry Hill. The performance earned Bracco an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress, a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress, and the Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress. Additional film credits from this period include Switch (1991), Medicine Man (1992), Radio Flyer (1992), Hackers (1995), The Basketball Diaries (1995), and Riding in Cars with Boys (2001).

Bracco secured the role of psychiatrist Dr. Jennifer Melfi on the HBO crime drama The Sopranos, which ran from 1999 to 2007, after persuading creator David Chase to cast her in that part rather than the lead female role of Carmela Soprano. Her work on the series brought her three consecutive Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series in 1999, 2000, and 2001, as well as Golden Globe nominations for Best TV Actress in a Drama in 2000, 2001, and 2002. She received an additional Emmy nomination in 2007 for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series. Across her career, Bracco has accumulated nominations for one Academy Award, four Emmy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, and three Screen Actors Guild Awards.

From 2002 to 2003, Bracco appeared on Broadway in The Graduate, marking her credited stage work in New York, the city where she was born. From 2010 to 2016, she co-starred as Angela Rizzoli on the TNT crime drama Rizzoli & Isles, appearing in all 105 episodes across the show's seven seasons. She subsequently had a recurring role as Toni on the Showtime comedy series Dice beginning in 2016, and a five-episode recurring role as Mayor Margaret Dutton on the CBS drama Blue Bloods in 2017 and 2018.

In 2020, Bracco starred in the HGTV documentary series My Big Italian Adventure, which followed her renovation of a 200-year-old house she purchased for €1 in Sambuca di Sicilia. In 2022, she provided the voice of Sofia the Seagull in Robert Zemeckis's remake of Pinocchio. The following year she starred in Waheed AlQawasmi's debut film Jacir, playing Meryl, an opioid-addicted neighbor of a Syrian refugee in Memphis, Tennessee. Bracco is also the owner of Bracco Wines, developed in association with Straight-Up Brands LLC, a line that was featured on the Season 1 finale of Bravo's Top Chef in 2006.

In her personal life, Bracco was married to Frenchman Daniel Guerard from 1979 to 1982; they have one daughter, actress Margaux Guerard. She was subsequently in a twelve-year relationship with actor Harvey Keitel, with whom she has a daughter, Stella Keitel, born in 1985. A custody dispute over Stella resulted in a lengthy legal battle that Bracco has described as contributing to her depression and costing approximately $2 million in legal fees. Her second marriage, to actor Edward James Olmos, lasted from 1994 to 2002. Bracco is a practitioner of Shotokan Karate and in 2015 co-authored the book To the Fullest: The Clean Up Your Act Plan to Lose Weight, Rejuvenate, and Be the Best You Can Be. She previously published a memoir, On the Couch, in 2006.