‘On the Couch’ with ‘The Sopranos’ psychiatrist

My daughter Stella was ten then, full of energy and spirit. She’d come bouncing in the door from school, calling to me, “Mommy, Mommy,” talking a mile a minute about her day, sharing every exciting and mundane thing that had happened since that morning. I’d put a smile on my face while listening with only half an ear and thinking about sleep. That definitely wasn’t me. I adored this little girl, and normally I hung on every word out of her mouth. It was all part of a vicious cycle. The worse I felt, the less I cared, and the less I cared, the worse I felt.

Stella mostly bought my act, but my sixteen-year-old daughter Margaux wasn’t so easily fooled. She saw right through me, with that terrifying teenage acuity of hers. “What’s the deal with you?” she’d ask, staring at me hard. I didn’t know, so I just said, “Nothing. Everything’s fine.” Margaux would roll her eyes, letting me know she didn’t believe it for a minute. “Okay. Everything’s fine,” she’d say, parroting me sarcastically.

Even the animals had my number. The dogs would watch me morosely, their eyes seemingly reflecting my depression, their normally high spirits dampened by my mood. My plump, normally affectionate cat would push himself up and lumber out of the room when he saw me coming. “No way am I dealing with her crap,” his disappearing tail seemed to signal.

My deepest fear was that I had permanently messed up my life. You see, although I can say I didn’t exactly know what was wrong with me, I suspected plenty. Depression didn’t just arrive out of the blue. It followed several years of a downhill slide, most of which was self-imposed.

In 1990, I’d been at the top of my game. I was nominated for an Academy Award for my performance in Goodfellas, and I felt as if nothing could touch me. In a business where your self-esteem is always on the line, it’s impossible to describe the overwhelming relief of being successful, even if that success is fleeting. Being considered for an Academy Award is a powerful rush of affirmation in a very crazy, quixotic business.

But I had a secret that I kept well hidden behind my glittering smile. As my career became more satisfying, my personal life was failing. More than anything, I wanted a sense of loving calm at home, but this dream was shattered. It was such a wild juxtaposition: in the eyes of the world I was a movie star, and I’d have to stop a minute and think, Holy shit. They’re paying me to do something that I love. But I’d get home and it was nothing but catastrophe. At this point, I’d been living with Harvey Keitel for eight years, and we were as good as married. We had the girls — my daughter Margaux, from my previous marriage, and our daughter Stella — and we’d just bought a beautiful house overlooking the Hudson River in Sneden’s Landing, an exclusive enclave north of New York City. But it wasn’t all tea and roses. I wondered if Harvey had the capacity for contentment. He seemed to be filled with rage — at the world, at his parents, at the industry, and at me. Some people would say it was this rage that made him such a compelling presence on the screen. Well, fine. He’s a brilliant, riveting, intense actor. But we were living with it every single day. When Harvey was home, the girls and I just wanted to stay out of the way. We tiptoed around, walking on eggshells. But a lot of the time he wasn’t home. And there were times, sometimes days on end, when I didn’t know where the hell he was.

Excerpted from “On the Couch,” by Lorraine Bracco. Copyright © 2006, Lorraine Bracco. All rights reserved. Published by Penguin Group (USA) Inc. No part of this excerpt can be used without permission of the publisher.

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