Later Life and Death
At 70, after more than 50 years of acting, she discovered a new popularity, and it was for playing a wildly unsympathetic character. Livia Soprano was a role that she compared to that of Caligula's great-grandmother in I, Claudius, a woman who also happened to be named Livia. Nancy died from lung cancer and emphysema on 18 June 2000, the day before what would have been her 72nd birthday in Stratford, Connecticut. As a result, her character's death was written into the third season story line of The Sopranos. Her husband of 48 years, actor Paul Sparer (1923–1999), had died the previous year, also from cancer. The couple had three children, Katie, an actress who lives in Stratford; David, of Madison, Wis.; and Rachel Sparer Bersier, an opera singer of Manhattan.
Read more about this topic: Nancy Marchand
Famous quotes containing the words life and/or death:
“This life we live is a strange dream, and I don’t believe at all any account men give of it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“So he with difficulty and labour hard
Moved on, with difficulty and labour he;
But he once passed, soon after when man fell,
Strange alteration! Sin and Death amain
Following his track, such was the will of Heaven,
Paved after him a broad and beaten way
Over the dark abyss, whose boiling gulf
Tamely endured a bridge of wondrous length
From hell continued reaching th’ utmost orb
Of this frail world;”
—John Milton (1608–1674)