Lorraine Bracco can make listening as forceful as speaking. We rate her for the directness that makes Karen Hill count in GoodFellas and the restraint that makes Jennifer Melfi indispensable to The Sopranos.
Fi1m perspective
Watch Lorraine Bracco listening to James Gandolfini in The Sopranos (1999): Jennifer Melfi's attention makes Tony's evasions harder to overlook. She gives him her full attention without making his account seem any more reliable. We found their conversations unsettling because her listening kept us alert to what he was avoiding. Gandolfini has a scene partner who can change its direction without raising her voice. This is acting worth watching even when the other person has the line.
GoodFellas (1990) was her breakthrough, casting her as Karen Hill, a mobster's wife, opposite Ray Liotta. Her husky New York voice and direct delivery help her establish Karen in a film that gives the men much more to occupy themselves with. Martin Scorsese and Nicholas Pileggi's screenplay lets her narrate, but Henry's account receives greater weight and her perspective never gets equal force. Bracco makes Karen's presence count, which only makes the shortage of time for her more frustrating. We recommend the film strongly, while wishing Scorsese had followed her experience further.
After a quieter 1990s, David Chase's series offered a substantial change, though Bracco was initially offered Carmela Soprano. She took Melfi, Tony's psychiatrist, instead and played her across all six seasons. Where Karen struggles for space in the writing, Melfi has conversations in which paying close attention is the job itself. Bracco's restraint gives Gandolfini room without allowing Tony's grievances to pass unexamined. Alongside Edie Falco, whose Carmela makes affection and exhausted patience equally persuasive, she helps ensure that the people listening to Tony matter as much as the man talking.
Her later television work includes Angela Rizzoli, the matriarch in Rizzoli & Isles (2010), returning her to a family role after the long stretch as Melfi. We would be wary of treating that sort of casting as the full measure of what she can do. Karen and Melfi give us ample reason to seek her out, though GoodFellas also shows how much depends on a screenplay allowing her more than a response to the men. Start there, then give The Sopranos time for the conversations.
Biography
Lorraine Bracco is an American actor. Born in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, she moved to France in 1974 and worked as a fashion model before beginning to act in French-language films. She later trained with John Strasberg and at the Actors Studio.
Bracco is known for her performance as Karen Hill in the film GoodFellas (1990), for which she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress, and as Dr Jennifer Melfi in the HBO series The Sopranos (1999–2007), which brought her multiple Primetime Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. Other credits include The Basketball Diaries (1995), Hackers (1995) and the series Rizzoli & Isles (2010–2016) as Angela Rizzoli.
