\n<\/p>\n
Suzanne Shepherd, an influential New York acting teacher who found success in midlife as a character actress, including memorable turns as the mothers of Edie Falco\u2019s character on \u201cThe Sopranos\u201d and Lorraine Bracco\u2019s character in \u201cGoodfellas,\u201d died on Friday at her home in Manhattan. She was 89.<\/p>\n
Her daughter, Kate Shepherd, said the cause was chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and kidney failure.<\/p>\n
After establishing herself as a stage actress and director, Ms. Shepherd became well known as an acting instructor \u2014 her students included Gregory Hines, Bebe Neuwirth and Christopher Meloni \u2014 before she began acting in film and on television when she was in her mid-50s.<\/p>\n
She began her big-screen career with two 1988 romantic comedies: \u201cWorking Girl,\u201d<\/a> in which she secured a role from its director, her old friend Mike Nichols<\/a>, appearing alongside Melanie Griffith and Harrison Ford; and \u201cMystic Pizza,\u201d<\/a> playing an aunt of the Julia Roberts character\u2019s boyfriend. She would accumulate about 40 film and television credits in the decades to come, with maternal roles a signature.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In Martin Scorsese\u2019s \u201cGoodfellas\u201d<\/a> (1990), Ms. Shepherd turned in a fiery performance as a protective suburban Jewish mother who is horrified when her daughter Karen (Ms. Bracco) starts dating Henry Hill (Ray Liotta<\/a>), a charming young associate of Italian American mobsters from Brooklyn. \u201cYou\u2019re here a month, and sometimes I know he doesn\u2019t come home at all<\/a>,\u201d her character seethes to Karen in a memorable scene in the family\u2019s living room. \u201cWhat kind of people are these?\u201d<\/p>\n Her other films include the John Candy comedy \u201cUncle Buck\u201d<\/a> (1989), the Tim Robbins psychological thriller \u201cJacob\u2019s Ladder\u201d<\/a> (1990) and the 1997 film version of Vladimir Nabokov\u2019s \u201cLolita,\u201d<\/a> starring Jeremy Irons and Dominique Swain.<\/p>\n Ms. Shepherd earned a place in television history in 2000, when she made the first of 20 appearances on David Chase\u2019s celebrated HBO series \u201cThe Sopranos,\u201d playing Mary DeAngelis<\/a>, the mother of Carmela Soprano (Ms. Falco) and the mother-in-law of the Mafia boss Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini<\/a>).<\/p>\n \u201cShe used to say, \u2018I played everybody\u2019s mom,\u2019\u201d her friend Carl Capotorto<\/a>, a television writer and actor who also appeared on \u201cThe Sopranos\u201d as Little Paulie Germani, said in a phone interview. \u201cShe knew that actresses at a certain age, you\u2019re the mother. She really loved to work, so she didn\u2019t mind: \u2018Mother, grandma, whatever. Put me on a set.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Her perseverance reflected the same drive and determination that she tried to instill in her acting students.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cActing is about wanting, wishing, needing something desperately<\/a>,\u201d Ms. Shepherd said in a 2016 instructional video. \u201cIf you win you win, and if you lose you win, because you get something both ways. But you fight to the death to get what you want.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Sadie Gertrude Stern was born on Oct. 31, 1934, in Elizabeth, N.J., the youngest of three children of David Stern, a jukebox and vending machine distributor, and Dora (Mendelson) Stern, a skilled cook who would later prepare feasts for the cast and crew of her daughter\u2019s productions. Sadie adopted the name Suzanne at 13 because she preferred the sound of it, Kate Shepherd said.<\/p>\n After graduating from Battin High School in Elizabeth, she received a bachelor\u2019s degree in English from Bennington College in Vermont in 1956.<\/p>\n Early in her career, she gained invaluable experience by performing with Alan Alda, Diana Sands and others as a member of the Hyannis Port, Mass., company of the influential Chicago improvisational troupe the Compass Players. One of the company\u2019s founders was David Shepherd<\/a>, whom she married in 1957.<\/p>\n Ms. Shepherd worked as both a stage actress and a director in the ensuing years. She developed a long and fruitful collaboration with the South African playwright Athol Fugard starting in the 1970s. She directed several of his plays, including \u201cBlood Knot,\u201d starring Danny Glover, at the Roundabout Theater in New York in 1980, and \u201cA Lesson From Aloes,\u201d<\/a> starring Mr. Glover and Joan Allen and presented by the Steppenwolf Theater Company in Chicago in 1985.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Along the way, Ms. Shepherd earned an outsize reputation in acting circles as a prot\u00e9g\u00e9e of her old teacher Sanford Meisner<\/a>, one of the most celebrated acting instructors of the 20th century.<\/p>\n She was an exponent of the Meisner technique<\/a>, which trains actors to respond viscerally and not intellectually, paying particular attention to the performances of the other actors. She taught at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater in New York, where Mr. Meisner was the director for decades, as well as at the New York University film school and elsewhere.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019ve got to look at the material as if you\u2019re filleting a fish,\u201d she said in the 2016 video, voicing one of her acting tenets. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to take off the words and see what\u2019s at the bones underneath.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In addition to Kate Shepherd, an artist, Ms. Shepherd is survived by her sister, Elaine Zheutlin, and a granddaughter, Isabelle Shepherd. Her marriage to Mr. Shepherd ended in divorce in 1966. (He died<\/a> in 2018.) Her son, Evan, died in 2011, and her grandson, Ewen McManus, died in 2021. Her second husband, Carroll Calkins, whom she married in 1996, died in 2006.<\/p>\n She worked regularly in her final years. In 2017 she portrayed Michelle Pfeiffer\u2019s ailing mother in the film \u201cWhere Is Kyra?\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n