CHUCK BARNEY, Knight Ridder Newspapers | Posted: Thursday, June 22, 2006 12:00 am
SAN FRANCISCO - The woman who has gained fame for her portrayal of leggy psychiatrist Dr. Melfi on "The Sopranos" admits that there have been times in her life when she really could have used the therapeutic assistance of her fictional alter ego.
"I'm kind of sorry I didn't have her to lean on," says Lorraine Bracco. "I think she would have been forthright in making me see some of the mistakes I was making -- the way she tries to do with Tony Soprano."
Indeed, Melfi might have helped Bracco cope with the emotional fallout of her failed marriages, or her long battle with clinical depression or the self-esteem issues that plagued the model-turned-actress in her early years. Pulling no punches, Bracco addresses all of this and more in her new memoir, "On the Couch".
The 51-year-old Brooklyn native, looking radiant after a brisk session with her makeup artist, appropriately enough settles into a couch in her suite at San Francisco's Four Seasons hotel. In town to promote the book, she dons white slacks, a lavender jacket and a typically feisty attitude.
"A lot of my friends say I'm brutally honest and I think that's what people are seeing," she says of the remarkable candor that flows through the book. "And then there's the fact that I've finally hit 50, which I call the new f-word. So I'm at the point where I really don't have to answer to anyone except for myself."
The memoir, which leads off each chapter with words of wisdom from Dr. Melfi, chronicles how Bracco survived childhood insecurity (classmates voted her the "ugliest girl in the sixth grade") to become a Wilhelmina model in Paris, and traces her rise from fledgling actress to star. Along the way, she gave birth to two daughters and endured a tumultuous breakup and child custody battle with actor Harvey Keitel. A subsequent divorce from actor Edward James Olmos also left her reeling.
Few details are spared in the account, which has Bracco accusing Keitel of days-long cocaine binges and a "flammable" rage.
"He was like a walking time bomb of stress," she writes. She also relates how she had an affair with Olmos while still with Keitel. Later, her relationship with Olmos was jolted when one of Bracco's girlfriends alleged that Olmos sexually molested her teenage daughter -- a claim Bracco angrily refutes, but admits the accusation put incredible pressure on the couple.
For years, Bracco says she resisted penning the memoir, despite the overt efforts of a friend who repeatedly presented her with blank journals on her birthday, along with the command to "get writing." When Bracco finally acquiesced, she found it to be an arduous process.
"There were times when I'd be pacing the room," she says. "I'd be thinking, 'I don't want to talk about this stuff again. I already spent enough time talking about it to my psychiatrist, to my family and my kids.' At times, it was very annoying and painful."
In her memoir, Bracco recalls that by the time "Sopranos" creator-producer David Chase approached her about doing the show, she was heavily in debt and seeing a therapist for depression. Still, Bracco was nervy enough to spurn Chase's efforts to cast her as Tony's wife, Carmela, even though her agent was convinced it would revitalize her career and help erase nearly $2 million in legal fees from her custody battle. (The role wound up going to Edie Falco.)
"I knew I could play Carmela, but I didn't want to. I'd already played the mob wife in a big way," writes Bracco, who earned an Oscar nomination for her role in director Martin Scorsese's Mafia saga "Goodfellas."
Instead, she pushed to play Melfi ("I identified with this woman. I could feel her. I knew her"), who not only provides the voice of conscience and hope in "The Sopranos," but seems to shadow Bracco wherever she goes.
"At parties, people want to corner me to talk about their therapy and the difficult things they've been through recently," she says. "I've also had a lot of psychiatrists critique the way I'm treating Tony Soprano. Some will point out that my skirts are too short, or that I'm a little too involved with my patient. And I'm like, 'Hey, it's a TV show. We're acting!'"
But Bracco's time as Dr. Melfi is waning. Production begins next month on the final eight episodes of HBO's acclaimed mob series. They'll follow a recently concluded 12-episode set that many fans and critics regarded as a letdown.
"I guess you can't please everybody," she says. "I think people thought there was going to be some kind of big ending or cliffhanger. But I don't think that's what David envisioned. He has been pretty consistent about following a path people don't expect him to take."
Bracco claims she has no clue as to what path "The Sopranos" will take from here on out. All she knows is that she's dreading the show's end.
"It's going to be very hard and sad and bittersweet," she insists. "We're a big, fat family on the show, and it's been a good, loving place for me. I wish it could go on for 50 years."