Actor Suzanne Shepherd, mostly known for her role as Mary DeAngelis in the drama series The Sopranos has died. She was 89. Shepherd has also starred in movies like Mystic Pizza, Requiem for a Dream, Goodfellas and Law and Order, a series.
She died at her home in New York on Friday. The cause of her death is yet to be determined. According to her representative, she had been suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Her breakout role was as the mother of Karen Hill, played by Lorraine Bracco in Goodfellas, which starred Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and Ray Liotta.
“Sad to hear of the passing of Suzanne Shepherd,” her Sopranos co-star Ray Abruzzo wrote on X (formerly Twitter) Sunday, adding that Shepherd was “a force of nature.”
Shepherd is survived by her daughter, Kate Shepherd, son-in-law Miles McManus and granddaughter Isabelle Shepherd. She last appeared in a war-era film “The Performance” alongside Jeremy Piven and Robert Carlyle. Born in 1934, she was a member of the pioneering improvisational theatre group Compass Players.
She has been a theatre director at the Nederlander in New York and the Steppenwolf in Chicago.
