Brenda Vaccaro
- Actress
- Camera and Electrical Department
Plucky, high-spirited, husky-voiced leading actress Brenda Buell Vaccaro was born in Brooklyn, the daughter of Italian immigrants Mario Angelo Vaccaro (1905-1958) and Christina Mario Onorato Vaccaro (née Pavia, 1907-2001). She spent her early childhood in Dallas, Texas, where her parents co-founded the popular Mario's Restaurant in 1943. At the age of twelve, young Brenda acted on stage for the first time, playing the role of Angelina in the Harrison Rhodes play 'The Willow Tree'. In 1956, she returned to New York to study drama for two years under Sanford Meisner and David Pressman at the Neighbourhood Playhouse in Manhattan. In 1961, Vaccaro made her debut on Broadway and duly won a Theatre World Award for her role as Gloria Gulock in the comedy play 'Everybody loves Opal', starring Eileen Heckart. She went on to receive three Best Actress Tony nominations in the later sixties for her performances in Cactus Flower, the musical How Now Dow Jones and The Goodbye People. In June 1985, Vaccaro replaced Rita Moreno in a female iteration of Neil Simon's comedy play The Odd Couple.
Vaccaro made her entry onto the screen in a 1961 episode of the procedural police drama series Naked City (1958). For the next few years, she appeared in small parts on television while supporting herself with temporary work as a waitress, a bathing suit model and a candy packer. At the end of the decade, she came to critical attention (and was nominated for a Golden Globe) as Shirley, the socialite who picks up male prostitute Joe Buck (Jon Voight) in Macadam cowboy (1969). She was also singled out for critical praise for her role as tough magazine editor Linda Riggs in Jacqueline Susann's otherwise tawdry drama Une fois ne suffit pas (1975), and as Soviet spy Ethel Rosenberg in Stanley Kramer's TV movie Judgment: The Trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (1974).
In May 1970, Vaccaro featured on the cover of Life Magazine with the tagline "Actresses with more than Glamour". Indeed, over the years, Vaccaro has been variously described by some of her peers as 'idiosyncratic', "an enormously strong personality" and "a subtle comedic genius". In her own words "I'm a very organic actress, my feet are firmly planted on the ground, and I know what the tools are."
This brings us to her many other notable screen credits, which include Mafia wife Rosalie Bonanno in the crime drama A pleins chargeurs (1973) ; the resourceful Diane, getting the better of a vicious quartet of thugs in Week-end sauvage (1976) ; the wife of an astronaut involved in a faked Mars mission in Capricorn One (1977); and the sister and partner-in-crime of Al Pacino's Dr. Jack Kevorkian in La vérité sur Jack (2010). Latterly somewhat starved of meatier parts, she popped up in a small role as the wife of Hollywood wheeler-dealer Marvin Schwarz (again Pacino) in a few scenes of Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in... Hollywood (2019).
For the small screen, Vaccaro briefly starred in her own western series as 1870s frontier schoolteacher Sara (1976) Yarnell. She also had a semi-regular role as a neurotic mother in the equally fleeting psychological thriller series Gypsy (2017). Her guest appearances have been diverse, ranging from Les rues de San Francisco (1972) and Arabesque (1984) to Ally McBeal (1997) and (as Bea Arthur's sister-in-law) in Les craquantes (1985). Vaccaro has provided the voice for the mischievous character Scruple in episodes of the animated kid's show Les Schtroumpfs (1981) and also that of scatterbrained Bunny in Johnny Bravo (1997). From the 1970s and all through the 80's, the resilient actress was a popular guest on talk shows and a frequent panelist on quiz programs (not to mention those lampooned TV Playtex ads...).
A lifelong liberal Democrat, Brenda Vaccaro is a member of Actor's Equity, the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. She has been married four times, divorced from composer, songwriter Martin Fried, attorney William S. Bishop and photographer Charles J. Cannizzaro. Her fourth husband (since 1986) has been the French-born Beverly Hills realtor Guy P. Hector.
Vaccaro made her entry onto the screen in a 1961 episode of the procedural police drama series Naked City (1958). For the next few years, she appeared in small parts on television while supporting herself with temporary work as a waitress, a bathing suit model and a candy packer. At the end of the decade, she came to critical attention (and was nominated for a Golden Globe) as Shirley, the socialite who picks up male prostitute Joe Buck (Jon Voight) in Macadam cowboy (1969). She was also singled out for critical praise for her role as tough magazine editor Linda Riggs in Jacqueline Susann's otherwise tawdry drama Une fois ne suffit pas (1975), and as Soviet spy Ethel Rosenberg in Stanley Kramer's TV movie Judgment: The Trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (1974).
In May 1970, Vaccaro featured on the cover of Life Magazine with the tagline "Actresses with more than Glamour". Indeed, over the years, Vaccaro has been variously described by some of her peers as 'idiosyncratic', "an enormously strong personality" and "a subtle comedic genius". In her own words "I'm a very organic actress, my feet are firmly planted on the ground, and I know what the tools are."
This brings us to her many other notable screen credits, which include Mafia wife Rosalie Bonanno in the crime drama A pleins chargeurs (1973) ; the resourceful Diane, getting the better of a vicious quartet of thugs in Week-end sauvage (1976) ; the wife of an astronaut involved in a faked Mars mission in Capricorn One (1977); and the sister and partner-in-crime of Al Pacino's Dr. Jack Kevorkian in La vérité sur Jack (2010). Latterly somewhat starved of meatier parts, she popped up in a small role as the wife of Hollywood wheeler-dealer Marvin Schwarz (again Pacino) in a few scenes of Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in... Hollywood (2019).
For the small screen, Vaccaro briefly starred in her own western series as 1870s frontier schoolteacher Sara (1976) Yarnell. She also had a semi-regular role as a neurotic mother in the equally fleeting psychological thriller series Gypsy (2017). Her guest appearances have been diverse, ranging from Les rues de San Francisco (1972) and Arabesque (1984) to Ally McBeal (1997) and (as Bea Arthur's sister-in-law) in Les craquantes (1985). Vaccaro has provided the voice for the mischievous character Scruple in episodes of the animated kid's show Les Schtroumpfs (1981) and also that of scatterbrained Bunny in Johnny Bravo (1997). From the 1970s and all through the 80's, the resilient actress was a popular guest on talk shows and a frequent panelist on quiz programs (not to mention those lampooned TV Playtex ads...).
A lifelong liberal Democrat, Brenda Vaccaro is a member of Actor's Equity, the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. She has been married four times, divorced from composer, songwriter Martin Fried, attorney William S. Bishop and photographer Charles J. Cannizzaro. Her fourth husband (since 1986) has been the French-born Beverly Hills realtor Guy P. Hector.
