Nancy Lou Marchand
Marchand with Ed Asner and Mason Adams in Lou Grant in 1977
Born	(1928-06-19)June 19, 1928 Buffalo, New York, U.S.
Died	June 18, 2000(2000-06-18) (aged 71) Stratford, Connecticut, U.S.
Education	Carnegie Mellon University (BFA)
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1951–2000
Spouse	Paul Sparer ​ ​ (m. 1951; died 1999)​
Children	3

Nancy Lou Marchand (June 19, 1928 – June 18, 2000) was an American actress. She began her career in theatre in 1951. She was perhaps most famous for her television portrayals of Margaret Pynchon on Lou Grant and Livia Soprano on The Sopranos.

Marchand was born in Buffalo, New York, to Raymond L. Marchand, a physician, and his wife, Marjorie Freeman, a pianist. She was raised Methodist.^[1] She graduated from the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) in 1949.^[2] She studied theatre at HB Studio^[3] in New York City.

An accomplished member of the Actors Studio,^[4] Marchand made her Broadway debut in The Taming of the Shrew in 1951. Additional theatre credits include The Merchant of Venice, Love's Labour's Lost, Much Ado About Nothing, Forty Carats, And Miss Reardon Drinks A Little, The Plough and the Stars, The Glass Menagerie, Morning's at Seven, Awake and Sing!, The Octette Bridge Club, Love Letters, Man and Superman, The Importance of Being Earnest, The School for Scandal, The Balcony, for which she won a Distinguished Performance Obie Award, and Black Comedy/White Liars, for which she was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play. She was nominated four times for the Drama Desk Award, winning handily for Morning's at Seven. She won a second Obie for her performance in A. R. Gurney's The Cocktail Hour.

On daytime television, Marchand created the roles of Vinnie Phillips on the CBS soap opera, Love of Life and Theresa Lamonte on the NBC soap, Another World. She also memorably starred as matriarch Edith Cushing on Lovers and Friends, a short-lived soap opera.

On prime time television, Marchand was renowned for her roles as patrician newspaper publisher Margaret Pynchon on Lou Grant—winning four Emmy Awards as Best Supporting Actress in a Dramatic Series for her performance—and 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 appeared in many anthology series in the early days of television, including The Philco Television Playhouse (on which she starred in Marty opposite Rod Steiger), Kraft Television Theatre, Studio One, and Playhouse 90. Additional television credits include The Law and Mr. Jones, Spenser: For Hire, Law & Order, Homicide: Life on the Street, Coach, and Night Court. She played Hester Crane, mother of Frasier Crane, on an episode of Cheers.

Marchand's feature film credits include Ladybug Ladybug, Me, Natalie, Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon, The Hospital, The Bostonians, Jefferson in Paris, The Bachelor Party (1957), Brain Donors, Reckless, The Naked Gun, Sabrina, Dear God, and From the Hip (1987).

Marchand suffered from both lung cancer and emphysema and died on June 18, 2000 in Stratford, Connecticut, one day before her 72nd birthday. Her character's death was written into the third season story line of The Sopranos. Her husband of 48 years, actor Paul Sparer, had died the previous year, also from cancer.^{[citation needed]} The couple had three children: Katie, an actress, David (Rosebud), a lawyer, and Rachel Sparer Bersier, an opera singer.^{[citation needed]} Marchand was posthumously inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.^[5]

• Nancy Marchand at Find a Grave
• Nancy Marchand at the Internet Broadway Database
• Nancy Marchand at IMDb
• Nancy Marchand at the Internet Off-Broadway Database