Lorraine Bracco Full Custody Stella - Bankruptcy? Tougher Than Counseling a Soprano, IN 1999, the debut of "The Sopranos" placed Lorraine Bracco, the actress who plays Tony Soprano's psychiatrist, on a trajectory that has made her a household name. That was also the year she filed for personal bankruptcy, an experience that she says was the nadir of her life.
"I went to go lease a car, and it became a trauma," she said, recalling a humiliation that still lingers in her memory. "I said to the rental car people: 'This is a done deal.' And they said: 'We are sorry. We are great fans, but we are not going to lease you the car.' "
Ms. Bracco, 51, was a highly regarded film actress well before "The Sopranos" started on HBO. In 1991, she was nominated for an Oscar as best supporting actress for her role in the film "Goodfellas," but she had never accumulated much capital. "I was never big enough for that," she said.
In 1994, she went to court to fight her former boyfriend Harvey Keitel for custody of their daughter, Stella. By 1999, she said, the legal fees forced her to file for bankruptcy.
Though she won custody of Stella, the struggle took its toll. Ms. Bracco, who plays the sultry-voiced psychiatrist Jennifer Melfi on "The Sopranos," felt completely out of control.
"It was horrifying and embarrassing: getting foreclosure notices; lawyers knocking on your door wanting their money and no work to be found," the actress recalled recently over lunch at the Algonquin Hotel in Manhattan. "It was basically, who do you pay at the end of the month. You have to pay the mortgage. You have to pay the taxes, food and electricity and lawyers."
Since those years, Ms. Bracco said, she has determinedly paid off much of her $2 million in debt to the lawyers in her bankruptcy and custody cases as well as nearly $500,000 in back taxes.
"I owe my last $50,000 to the bankruptcy lawyers," she said, sounding somewhat relieved. And the increasing success of "The Sopranos" has allowed her to accumulate several million dollars in assets.
"The show was a blessing," she said. "It gives me huge financial security." It meant I could think, 'Oh, my God! I can go to work next year; I don't really have to worry.' "
For the twice-divorced actress, bankruptcy has underscored the importance of financial independence. "It made me more committed to putting enough money away so that I would never have to worry," Ms. Bracco said.
"The Sopranos" has helped her move closer to that goal. Income from the series, along with her earnings from the 2001 film "Riding in Cars With Boys" and the Broadway production of "The Graduate" in 2002, all went to pay her legal fees, she said. Ms. Bracco even took a loan to help pay the back taxes she owed the government.
One asset that she kept through it all was her waterfront home on two acres in Sneden's Landing, in Rockland County, N.Y. "I figured I should have two consistent things for the kids: me and our home," she said. "I was land-rich and cash-poor."
Today, she is nearly out of the woods, she said.
"A few more bills and it is all done," said her accountant, Bert Padell, of Padell, Nadell, Fine & Weinberger. HBO's decision to extend "The Sopranos" through 2007 could bring her about $4 million before taxes, he said. And her real estate holdings, which include a house in Bridgehampton that she bought two years ago, along with the Sneden's Landing property, may be worth a net $6 million.
That is not a bad nest egg for a woman whose father got up every morning at 2 a.m. to sell fish at the Fulton Fish Market.
Ms. Bracco became a money maker in her youth in Brooklyn. Though some classmates called her the ugliest girl in the sixth grade, Ms. Bracco had big dreams and confided to her high-school English teacher that she wanted to model. With his encouragement, she called the top agencies, including Wilhelmina Models. Wilhelmina Cooper herself took one look at the 16-year-old teenager and came to the family's house to sign a modeling contract that paid her $50 an hour. Her career landed her in Paris just three years later.
"I got off the plane and I thought, 'I belong here,' " Ms. Bracco recalled. "It was like déjà vu." She made enough of a splash on the French modeling circuit to infatuate a prince. Prince Jean Poniatowski, a member of a prestigious Parisian family, took her to dinner at the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles and wanted to buy her lavish gifts. But when he offered to get her an expensive car, she felt uncomfortable.
"Everyone was telling me to marry him," she recalled. " 'You will be a princess,' " she remembered her friends saying.
"I said to Jean, 'Princesses don't come from Brooklyn.' And he would say to me, 'Lorraine, you are so wrong,' " Ms. Bracco recalled, with a raucous, nonprincess laugh.
Over the years Ms. Bracco has dated other rich men, including the entrepreneur Ronald O. Perelman, but her long-term relationships have not been with superwealthy men. She says that she has never had a prenuptial agreement because "I never married anybody with any money."
She never had "that Cinderella thing," she said.
"I never had that view of being taken care of," she added. "I don't know why. I just never wanted to be dependent, to ask to buy my underwear." With wealthy men, there is, Ms. Bracco believes, "an uneven balance."
In 1978, Ms. Bracco married Daniel Guerard, a Frenchman who had a chain of hair salons in France and Italy. A year later, they had a daughter - whom Ms. Bracco named Margaux, after the wine. The couple later divorced.
"The only thing I got in the divorce was Margaux," she said of her daughter, who returned to the United States with her mother.
When Ms. Bracco moved in with Harvey Keitel after meeting him in Paris at a film opening, he was the breadwinner, she said. "It was one of the only times I think I was not 100 percent self-sufficient," she added. "After a little bit of time, I got on my feet."
As her career took off, the couple pooled their finances and over the years made money in real estate, including a TriBeCa apartment, which was sold during her bankruptcy. After breaking up with Mr. Keitel, Ms. Bracco married the actor Edward James Olmos in 1994 but handled her own finances. "With Eddie it was separate" because his business interests were in California, she said.
She and Mr. Olmos were divorced several years ago in the wake of the court battle with Mr. Keitel for custody of Stella. It ended with Stella in Ms. Bracco's custody, and with Mr. Olmos banned from seeing Stella alone, Ms. Bracco said. An assistant said that Mr. Olmos was traveling and could not be reached for comment.
Currently, Ms. Bracco is dating Jason Cipolla, 30, a driver for the show. "He is young, but he has an old soul," Ms. Bracco said. As for their finances, "Sometimes he pays and sometimes I pay."
In her search for financial independence, Ms. Bracco sticks to one investment: real estate.
"I never bought a stock in my life," she said. "I don't understand it. To me it is like Chinese."
Real estate, on the other hand, "is like porn for me," she said. "Listen, if I am going to get in a cab to go home, and I see a sign for an open house, I will go in. I like real estate because I am the boss." Ms. Bracco sees herself as "an entrepreneur of real estate."
The house in Sneden's Landing is up for sale, Ms. Bracco said, because she has decided that she wants to be in Manhattan now that Margaux and Stella are both in their 20's.
Some commentators who track personal investing strategies say they believe that Ms. Bracco is taking a big risk with such a heavy bet on real estate.
Suze Orman, for example, the best-selling author, says that because real estate is tangible, it gives some women the feeling that "they are in control. They can see it and touch it." But, she said, it is not a wise strategy because an investor needs to diversify.
Ms. Bracco says she doesn't care. "I diversify, but I do it by ZIP code," she said.
Her financial strategy actually is not quite that simple. "The truth in acting is that we are all hired help," Ms. Bracco said. "We are a commodity. There is no difference between being an actor and pork bellies. I can't change that, but I want to be the master of something that I create."
That something is a wine venture that she is embarking on with Vincent Viola, a liquor importer introduced to her by her accountant, Mr. Padell.
Mr. Viola and Ms. Bracco soon expect to begin importing a line of "Bracco Wines" from Italy. She has an equity stake in the business but is not putting up any capital.
"I am not just another actress selling perfume or a hair product," Ms. Bracco said.
Ms. Bracco can count on the next two seasons of "The Sopranos" to keep her name in lights and her income flowing.
She says she has only two regrets. "I never had a son," she said, "and I never had a minivan."
"I went to go lease a car, and it became a trauma," she said, recalling a humiliation that still lingers in her memory. "I said to the rental car people: 'This is a done deal.' And they said: 'We are sorry. We are great fans, but we are not going to lease you the car.' "
Ms. Bracco, 51, was a highly regarded film actress well before "The Sopranos" started on HBO. In 1991, she was nominated for an Oscar as best supporting actress for her role in the film "Goodfellas," but she had never accumulated much capital. "I was never big enough for that," she said.
In 1994, she went to court to fight her former boyfriend Harvey Keitel for custody of their daughter, Stella. By 1999, she said, the legal fees forced her to file for bankruptcy.
Though she won custody of Stella, the struggle took its toll. Ms. Bracco, who plays the sultry-voiced psychiatrist Jennifer Melfi on "The Sopranos," felt completely out of control.
"It was horrifying and embarrassing: getting foreclosure notices; lawyers knocking on your door wanting their money and no work to be found," the actress recalled recently over lunch at the Algonquin Hotel in Manhattan. "It was basically, who do you pay at the end of the month. You have to pay the mortgage. You have to pay the taxes, food and electricity and lawyers."
Since those years, Ms. Bracco said, she has determinedly paid off much of her $2 million in debt to the lawyers in her bankruptcy and custody cases as well as nearly $500,000 in back taxes.
"I owe my last $50,000 to the bankruptcy lawyers," she said, sounding somewhat relieved. And the increasing success of "The Sopranos" has allowed her to accumulate several million dollars in assets.
"The show was a blessing," she said. "It gives me huge financial security." It meant I could think, 'Oh, my God! I can go to work next year; I don't really have to worry.' "
For the twice-divorced actress, bankruptcy has underscored the importance of financial independence. "It made me more committed to putting enough money away so that I would never have to worry," Ms. Bracco said.
"The Sopranos" has helped her move closer to that goal. Income from the series, along with her earnings from the 2001 film "Riding in Cars With Boys" and the Broadway production of "The Graduate" in 2002, all went to pay her legal fees, she said. Ms. Bracco even took a loan to help pay the back taxes she owed the government.
One asset that she kept through it all was her waterfront home on two acres in Sneden's Landing, in Rockland County, N.Y. "I figured I should have two consistent things for the kids: me and our home," she said. "I was land-rich and cash-poor."
Today, she is nearly out of the woods, she said.
"A few more bills and it is all done," said her accountant, Bert Padell, of Padell, Nadell, Fine & Weinberger. HBO's decision to extend "The Sopranos" through 2007 could bring her about $4 million before taxes, he said. And her real estate holdings, which include a house in Bridgehampton that she bought two years ago, along with the Sneden's Landing property, may be worth a net $6 million.
That is not a bad nest egg for a woman whose father got up every morning at 2 a.m. to sell fish at the Fulton Fish Market.
Ms. Bracco became a money maker in her youth in Brooklyn. Though some classmates called her the ugliest girl in the sixth grade, Ms. Bracco had big dreams and confided to her high-school English teacher that she wanted to model. With his encouragement, she called the top agencies, including Wilhelmina Models. Wilhelmina Cooper herself took one look at the 16-year-old teenager and came to the family's house to sign a modeling contract that paid her $50 an hour. Her career landed her in Paris just three years later.
"I got off the plane and I thought, 'I belong here,' " Ms. Bracco recalled. "It was like déjà vu." She made enough of a splash on the French modeling circuit to infatuate a prince. Prince Jean Poniatowski, a member of a prestigious Parisian family, took her to dinner at the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles and wanted to buy her lavish gifts. But when he offered to get her an expensive car, she felt uncomfortable.
"Everyone was telling me to marry him," she recalled. " 'You will be a princess,' " she remembered her friends saying.
"I said to Jean, 'Princesses don't come from Brooklyn.' And he would say to me, 'Lorraine, you are so wrong,' " Ms. Bracco recalled, with a raucous, nonprincess laugh.
Over the years Ms. Bracco has dated other rich men, including the entrepreneur Ronald O. Perelman, but her long-term relationships have not been with superwealthy men. She says that she has never had a prenuptial agreement because "I never married anybody with any money."
She never had "that Cinderella thing," she said.
"I never had that view of being taken care of," she added. "I don't know why. I just never wanted to be dependent, to ask to buy my underwear." With wealthy men, there is, Ms. Bracco believes, "an uneven balance."
In 1978, Ms. Bracco married Daniel Guerard, a Frenchman who had a chain of hair salons in France and Italy. A year later, they had a daughter - whom Ms. Bracco named Margaux, after the wine. The couple later divorced.
"The only thing I got in the divorce was Margaux," she said of her daughter, who returned to the United States with her mother.
When Ms. Bracco moved in with Harvey Keitel after meeting him in Paris at a film opening, he was the breadwinner, she said. "It was one of the only times I think I was not 100 percent self-sufficient," she added. "After a little bit of time, I got on my feet."
As her career took off, the couple pooled their finances and over the years made money in real estate, including a TriBeCa apartment, which was sold during her bankruptcy. After breaking up with Mr. Keitel, Ms. Bracco married the actor Edward James Olmos in 1994 but handled her own finances. "With Eddie it was separate" because his business interests were in California, she said.
She and Mr. Olmos were divorced several years ago in the wake of the court battle with Mr. Keitel for custody of Stella. It ended with Stella in Ms. Bracco's custody, and with Mr. Olmos banned from seeing Stella alone, Ms. Bracco said. An assistant said that Mr. Olmos was traveling and could not be reached for comment.
Currently, Ms. Bracco is dating Jason Cipolla, 30, a driver for the show. "He is young, but he has an old soul," Ms. Bracco said. As for their finances, "Sometimes he pays and sometimes I pay."
In her search for financial independence, Ms. Bracco sticks to one investment: real estate.
"I never bought a stock in my life," she said. "I don't understand it. To me it is like Chinese."
Real estate, on the other hand, "is like porn for me," she said. "Listen, if I am going to get in a cab to go home, and I see a sign for an open house, I will go in. I like real estate because I am the boss." Ms. Bracco sees herself as "an entrepreneur of real estate."
The house in Sneden's Landing is up for sale, Ms. Bracco said, because she has decided that she wants to be in Manhattan now that Margaux and Stella are both in their 20's.
Some commentators who track personal investing strategies say they believe that Ms. Bracco is taking a big risk with such a heavy bet on real estate.
Suze Orman, for example, the best-selling author, says that because real estate is tangible, it gives some women the feeling that "they are in control. They can see it and touch it." But, she said, it is not a wise strategy because an investor needs to diversify.
Ms. Bracco says she doesn't care. "I diversify, but I do it by ZIP code," she said.
Her financial strategy actually is not quite that simple. "The truth in acting is that we are all hired help," Ms. Bracco said. "We are a commodity. There is no difference between being an actor and pork bellies. I can't change that, but I want to be the master of something that I create."
That something is a wine venture that she is embarking on with Vincent Viola, a liquor importer introduced to her by her accountant, Mr. Padell.
Mr. Viola and Ms. Bracco soon expect to begin importing a line of "Bracco Wines" from Italy. She has an equity stake in the business but is not putting up any capital.
"I am not just another actress selling perfume or a hair product," Ms. Bracco said.
Ms. Bracco can count on the next two seasons of "The Sopranos" to keep her name in lights and her income flowing.
She says she has only two regrets. "I never had a son," she said, "and I never had a minivan."