Bio
Edie Falco is an American actress best known for her lead role as Carmela Soprano on the television series The Sopranos, as well as Diane Wittlesey on Oz and as the title character in Nurse Jackie.
Falco was born in Brooklyn, New York to Frank Falco (an Italian commercial artist, who is, at present, a sculptor) and Judith Anderson (a retired Swedish actress).
Falco's siblings are Joseph, Paul and Ruth. Her uncle is novelist, playwright and poet Edward Falco, an English professor at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg.
She was raised in Northport, on Long Island.
Falco graduated from Northport High School in 1981, after playing Eliza Doolittle in a production of My Fair Lady. She attended SUNY Purchase with fellow actors Stanley Tucci and Ving Rhames, with whom she remains good friends.
Her first big break in films was a small speaking role in the 1994 Woody Allen film Bullets Over Broadway. One reason she got the part was her friendship with former SUNY Purchase classmate Eric Mendelsohn, who at the time was assistant to Allen's costume designer, Jeffrey Kurland.
Mendelsohn would go on to direct Falco in his feature film Judy Berlin, for which he won "Best Director" honors at the Sundance Film Festival.
Falco and The X-Files star Gillian Anderson are the only actresses to have received a Golden Globe, an Emmy and a SAG Award in the same year. Falco won the awards in 2003 for her performance as Carmela Soprano in the television series The Sopranos.
Prior to that, she was a regular performer on Oz. She also had recurring roles on Law & Order and Homicide: Life on the Street.
Falco has won three Emmys, two Golden Globes and three Screen Actors Guild Awards. In 2006, she was notoriously snubbed by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for her performance as Carmela Soprano on The Sopranos, even though most critics considered her a sure thing to win the award.
She appeared in the films Trust, Cop Land, Random Hearts, Freedomland, and John Sayles' Sunshine State, for which she received the Los Angeles Film Critics Award for "Best Supporting Actress".
On Broadway, she appeared in the Tony Award-winning Side Man and in the revivals of Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune opposite Stanley Tucci, and Night, Mother opposite Brenda Blethyn.
Falco has an adopted son, Anderson Falco, and an adopted daughter, Macy Falco.