Who

Edie Falco is a film, TV, and stage actress best known as Mrs. Carmela Soprano.

Backstory

Brooklyn native Falco started acting in high school, following the lead of her Swedish-born community-theater-actress mom. After attending SUNY Purchase she worked as a waitress for years, and developed her acting career with small parts in films like Abel Ferrera's The Addiction and Woody Allen's Bullets Over Broadway. Throughout the '90s she popped up on the small screen in the company of various hardened criminals: She had recurring roles as a cop's wife on Homicide: Life on the Street, as a legal aid attorney on Law & Order, and as a prison officer on Oz. She landed her career-making gig in 1999, when she received a call from David Chase as he was gearing up to create The Sopranos.

Of note

The last decade has been good to Falco. The runaway success of The Sopranos made her a household name, and her nuanced portrayal of conflicted mob wife Carmela earned her critical acclaim as well. Falco is the only actress to ever to win a Golden Globe, an Emmy, and a SAG award in the same year, a feat she pulled off in 2003. While The Sopranos was on the air, Falco spent much of her downtime on Broadway: She appeared in a 2002 production of Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune (opposite Stanley Tucci) and she starred in the 2004 revival of 'night, Mother. She'll appear on the big screen in 2008 in Todd Graff's forthcoming indie Cult Figure, produced by Christine Vachon.

Medical file

After several years during which she was "drunk all the time," Falco quit the bottle in the 90s. "My life was an absolute mess, and I was hanging out with very scary and dangerous people and behaving in ways that I was horrified by." Another personal battle Falco had to overcome was breast cancer: In 2004 it was revealed that the actress had recently recovered from the disease.

Personal

Falco previously dated fellow actor Stanley Tucci, whom she's known since college. Unfortunately, he was married when the affair started in 2003—Tucci later left his wife and children for Falco—but the couple broke up in 2004. Falco adopted a baby boy, Anderson, later that year, and in 2008 adopted another child, a girl named Macy. She and her kids live on West 12th Street with their Lab-Shepherd mix named Marley and spend weekends at an old farmhouse in the Catskills.

Pet causes

She joined the Mothers Against Bush campaign during the 2004 presidential election, starring in a 30-second commercial for the group that debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival. More recently, she appeared with her favorite high school teacher in ads for the non-profit TeachersCount.

True story

Before hitting the big time, Falco worked as a party entertainer for a company in Long Island. After dancing at a wedding in a Cookie Monster costume, her boss bitched her out, saying Falco hadn't been convincing as a Muppet.