For most people, Nancy Marchand, who died on June 18th, the day before her 72nd birthday, will be remembered as Mrs Margaret Pynchon, the imperious, but essentially fair-minded and liberal owner of the fictional Los Angeles Tribune, in the 1970s television series, Lou Grant.
City editor Grant (Ed Asner) complained about her superior and sardonic air, but most journalists would love to work for someone like Mrs Pynchon.
Hers was also one of the few TV roles showing an intelligent woman in a powerful position. Nancy Marchand once described Mrs Pynchon as "a strange combination of being very imposing and down-to-earth". She won four Emmy awards for the role, each of which acted as a leg of a coffee table in her home.
More recently, however, she managed to obliterate this perception of herself as a patrician woman by brilliantly playing Livia Soprano, the monstrous, whining, half-senile, domineering mother of mob boss Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) in the Home Box Office series, The Sopranos.
She never forgives her son for putting her into a nursing home, and becomes the cause of much of his guilt. "I think Livia is the first role I've ever had where the make-up crew tries to make me look bad," she commented. "I may be getting older, but I don't look quite that decrepit."
She was in at the exciting beginnings of TV drama in America, her most famous role being Clara, the lonely, plain young schoolmistress in the original 1953 live broadcast of Paddy Chayevsky's Marty, opposite Rod Steiger in the title role.
The actress was a close friend of Chayevsky's, appearing in several of his television plays, including The Catered Affair and The Bachelor Party, making her feature debut in the film version of the latter.
But, despite the wider recognition of television, she had a long, varied and distinguished stage career. After studying at the Actor's Studio - with the likes of Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward and John Cassavetes - she made her New York debut as the Tavern Hostess in The Taming Of The Shrew in 1951, going on to play many larger Shakespearean roles, including Nerissa, in The Merchant Of Venice, the nurse, in Romeo And Juliet, and the Princess of France, in Love's Labour's Lost.
In 1960, she won an Obie award for the role of the madame of the kinky brothel in Jean Genet's The Balcony.
It was then back to the classics at the American Shakespeare festival at Stratford, Connecticut, and the Lincoln Centre repertory theatre, where she was splendidly regal as Queen Elizabeth in Schiller's Mary Stuart.
Among her best film roles were Mrs Burrage, in James Ivory's The Bostonians (1984), the Los Angeles mayor, in The Naked Gun (1988), and as a crusty, snobbish dowager waking up audiences in the soporific Sabrina (1995) - somehow managing to combine elements of Mrs Pynchon and Livia Soprano.
In real life, Nancy Marchand, who is survived by two daughters and a son, was very different from the strong-willed characters she played.
"I'm always very uncomfortable with people," she once admitted. "It's something that I get upset with myself for, but that's the way I am. But I love people. And when I'm on the stage, I can embrace people and still feel safe."
Nancy Marchand: born 1928; died, June 2000