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:
“Human life consists in mutual service. No grief, pain, misfortune, or “broken heart,” is excuse for cutting off one’s life while any power of service remains. But when all usefulness is over, when one is assured of an unavoidable and imminent death, it is the simplest of human rights to choose a quick and easy death in place of a slow and horrible one.”
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