Lorraine Bracco

Actress Lorraine Bracco received widespread acclaim from critics and fans alike for her role as psychiatrist "Dr. Jennifer Melfi" on HBO's classic series, The Sopranos. Her concise, understated portrayal earned her multiple Emmy, Golden Globe, and Screen Actors Guild Award Nominations for Best Actress in a TV Drama.

A versatile actress in both television and film, Bracco was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance as a mobster's wife in Goodfellas, directed by Martin Scorsese. She also starred as Drew Barrymore's mother in Riding In Cars With Boys, directed by Penny Marshall, and appeared in the indie thriller Tangled, directed by Jay Lowi with Rachel Leigh Cook.

Bracco became a first-time author with the release of her autobiography, On the Couch, in 2006. Writing candidly about her battle with depression, relationships, and financial struggles, Bracco's book was praised as "intimate, warm, humorous and honest" by AudioFile.

After purchasing a home in Sambuca, Italy in 2019, she reached out to an HGTV executive and pitched him a show that was part home-renovation diary, part returning-to-her-roots documentary. The result, “My Big Italian Adventure,” began airing in October 2020. The show follows Bracco, sixty-six, as she becomes the lucky owner of an Italian villa—and as she realizes, almost immediately, how hard it will be to yank the house into the twenty-first century.

Born in Brooklyn to an Italian American father and an English mother, she became a Paris fashion model represented by the Wilhelmina Agency despite once being voted "the ugliest girl in sixth grade." She told The Los Angeles Times that she was "never glamorous, more the girl-next door type."

Bracco worked as a disc jockey for Radio Luxembourg and began to act in films. She appeared in several French comedies and worked with Italian film director Lina Wertmuller. Returning to the US, she studied at Stella Adler and the Actors Studio in New York City.

Her American feature film debut came in the 1987 Ridley Scott's thriller, Someone to Watch Over Me. According to The Los Angeles Times, "Bracco's portrayal of a cuckolded Queens housewife who forgoes tears to KO her unfaithful detective husband captivated pre-Thelma & Louise audiences." Other film credits include: The Pick-Up Artist, Switch, Radio Flyer, Medicine Man, Even Cowgirls Get The Blues, Hackers and Basketball Diaries.

Bracco is a member of the Board of Directors of an environmental organization called Riverkeeper, as well as a member of the Board of the New York Council for the Humanities. She is also committed to promoting awareness of women's heart disease, prevention and treatment as a spokesperson for the American Heart Association's "Go Red for Women" movement.