Who

Best known for her role as Dr. Melfi on The Sopranos, Bracco also has an impressive resume when it comes to marrying and divorcing character actors and going broke.

Backstory

Brooklyn-born Bracco grew up in Hicksville on Long Island, and was voted "Ugliest Girl" in the 6th grade. She apparently blossomed in her teenage years: After graduating from high school, she moved to Paris to model where she walked the runway for Jean-Paul Gaultier, although she says she turned down Salvador Dali's request to pose nude. Bracco eventually found her way into European films and spent a decade on the other side of the pond. She moved back to the U.S. in the late '80s and earned kudos and an Oscar nod for her role as a strung-out mob wife in Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas in 1990.

A procession of fairly well-received movies followed including Radio Flyer, Gus Van Sant's Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, and 1995's The Basketball Diaries, but Bracco only really entered the public consciousness after David Chase cast her in The Sopranos as James Gandolfini's conflicted therapist, Dr. Jennifer Melfi. The exposure helped her make the jump to Broadway in 2004 when she appeared as Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate. Since then—and since the demise of the show—Bracco has maintained a low profile. She appeared in a Christmas-themed TV movie for the ABC Family channel in 2007 and made two guest appearances in 2008 on the Candace Bushnell-created show Lipstick Jungle.

In print

In 2006, Bracco published On the Couch, in which she discusses her battle with depression. Conveniently, it led to her current gig as a spokesperson for Pfizer's anti-depressant medication Zoloft.

On the side

Bracco is the founder of Bracco Wines, which was featured in an episode of Bravo's Top Chef. She doesn't actually own any vineyards in Italy, though. Bracco just picks out the wine, which is then imported to the U.S.

Personal

Bracco's had a rocky romantic history. She was married to her first husband, Daniel Guerard, from 1978 to 1982. (Their marriage yielded one daughter, Margaux, who appeared with Bracco in Goodfellas.) She married Harvey Keitel the same year and they spent 11 years together, but the relationship eventually culminated in divorce and a messy five-year battle for custody of their daughter Stella. Bracco married her third husband, actor Edward James Olmos, in 1994. The couple split up 1999, the same year she was forced to file for bankruptcy, in part because of the mounting legal bills from her divorce contest with Keitel. (Her divorce from Olmos was finalized in 2002.) She's currently dating Jason Cipolla, a former Syracuse basketball player whom she met while he was working as a driver on the set of The Sopranos.

Habitat

Bracco lives in an apartment on West 23rd Street, and also owns a 5,000 square-foot-house in Bridgehampton.

Family ties

Her sister Elizabeth is an actress as well. In addition to roles in The First Wives Club and Analyze This, she made a brief appearance on The Sopranos.