Nancy Marchand

Actress Nancy Marchand is dead. A spokeswoman for HBO says Marchand died last night at her home in Connecticut after a long battle with lung cancer and emphysema. Today would've been Marchand's 72nd birthday. Marchand kept appearing as Tony Soprano's mother in HBO's "The Sopranos" even after she was diagnosed with cancer. Marchand was born in Buffalo, New York, and began her Broadway career in "The Taming of the Shrew" in 1951. She was nominated four times for the Drama Desk Award, winning for "Morning's at Seven". On television, Marchand was known for her roles of autocratic newspaper publisher Margaret Pynchon on Lou Grant - winning four Emmy Awards as Best Supporting Actress in a Dramatic Series for her performance - as well as for playing matriarch Livia Soprano, mother of Tony Soprano, on the HBO series The Sopranos, which earned her a Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series. She is survived by three children and many grandchildren.