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Edie Falco was the first actress to sweep the top three television awards in one year. In 2000, she received the Emmy, Golden Globe and SAG awards for best actress, all for her performance as Carmela Soprano in the hit HBO series The Sopranos. She has played Carmela since 1999, and also won the Golden Globe and Emmy awards for best actress in 2003.

Falco was born July 5, 1963, in Brooklyn, NY. She graduated from the acting program at SUNY Purchase and, immediately afterwards, went to work as a clown and entertainer at weddings and birthday parties. She began to get small parts in films in the late 1980s. Some of the films she has appeared in include The Unbelievable Truth (1990), Laws of Gravity (1992), Bullets Over Broadway (1994), The Addiction (1995), Cost of Living (1997, for which she won the Los Angeles AFI Film Festival Best Actress award), Cop Land (1997), A Price Above Rubies (1998), Random Hearts (1999) and Sunshine State (2002).

From 1993-1996, Falco had a recurring role as the wife of a blinded police officer on NBC's acclaimed drama Homicide: Life on the Street. She also guest-starred on Law and Order, Oz and Will and Grace.

Falco made her Broadway debut in 1999, in Warren Leight's semi-autobiographical play Side Man, in a role that she originated in 1996 in workshop productions. She has also appeared on stage in The Vagina Monologues and Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune.

Last updated: July 01, 2007.

• Born: Jul 05, 1963
• Occupation: Actor
• Active: '90s-2000s
• Major Genres: Drama, Comedy
• Career Highlights: Judy Berlin, Trust, The Addiction
• First Major Screen Credit: Trust (1990)

Biography

Known as part of "the Purchase Mafia" thanks to her status as one of the many illustrious alumni of the State University of New York at Purchase, Edie Falco is one of America's most well-respected television and film actresses. A native of Brooklyn, Falco, who is of Sicilian heritage, was born in 1963. She got her professional start acting in fellow-Purchase alum Hal Hartley's films, most notably Trust (1991), which cast her as the unrepentantly trampy older sister of a pregnant cheerleader (Adrienne Shelly). Falco spent the 1990s dividing her time and talent between TV and film, doing recurring work on such series as Homicide: Life on the Street and Law and Order, and appearing in a slew of diverse films that included Woody Allen's Bullets over Broadway (1994) and The Addiction (1995).

In 1997, Falco began earning kudos for her performance as Officer Diane Whittlesey on the HBO prison drama Oz; she stayed with the show for two years, after which she garnered even greater acclaim for her work on another HBO series, The Sopranos. Cast as Carmela Soprano, wife of Mafioso Tony Soprano, Falco won both a 1999 Emmy and a 2000 Golden Globe for her work on the show. The growing respect and recognition she garnered for her television work was ably complemented by the acclaim she was increasingly receiving for her work on the big screen; after winning an Independent Spirit Award for her role in the noirish Cost of Living (1997), she gave a strong portrayal of a jailed mother in Morgan J. Freeman's Hurricane Streets (1997). In 1999, Falco earned her strongest screen notices to date for her title role in Eric Mendelsohn's Judy Berlin, portraying an aspiring actress trying to break out of her small Long Island town. ~ Rebecca Flint, All Movie Guide

Sunshine State Buy this Movie	Overnight Sensation Buy this Movie	Judy Berlin Buy this Movie	Random Hearts Buy this Movie
A Price Above Rubies Buy this Movie	Hurricane Buy this Movie	The Sunshine Boys Buy this Movie	The Addiction Buy this Movie

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