Fast chat: Edie Falco on her many roles

Edie Falco's nickname could be "Carmela chameleon." All through her career, the Emmy-winning actress has been a master at transforming herself into characters as diverse as Eliza Doolittle in her Northport High School days to her famous TV counterparts - no-nonsense mob wife Carmela Soprano and the ethically challenged Nurse Jackie.

In "This Wide Night," at the Peter Jay Sharp Theatre in Manhattan, she's taken her chameleon routine to another level. Hiding behind straggly hair, Urkel-like glasses and a British accent, she's gotten an extreme homely makeover to play an insecure ex-con hoping to reconnect with a fellow former prisoner played by Alison Pill.

In her off hours, Falco's favorite role is mom to son Anderson, 5, daughter Macy, 2, and dog Marley, 12. Newsday's Daniel Bubbeo recently sat down with Falco, 46, in midtown Manhattan, to talk about her many roles, including a performance as Cookie Monster that she'd like to forget.

In this play, you don't look anything like you ever have before. Is that one of the things that appealed to you about it?

That's one thing. Certainly that's not the first thing that appealed to me. When I read the play, I liked her. Yes, she is very far from me, but had she been even closer to who I am, I would have found her interesting.

Do you miss doing "The Sopranos"?

In the way that I miss Christmas when I was a little kid. I think of me and my brothers and sisters running into the den and screaming, and there were all the presents under the tree. There's nothing in the world that will ever be that, but it's done. So I have the same sort of beautiful, lovely, melancholy feelings about it. That was that chapter, and now I'm a grown-up with kids of my own, and Christmas is a different experience.

You really struggled for a long time in this business, living in crummy apartments and facing rejection. Were you at any point just ready to say, "I give up, I can't do it"?

Nope. Because even throughout all of it, I was doing it. I wasn't getting paid for it, but I was taking time off of my restaurant jobs and office jobs to do no-pay projects or to do something from Backstage magazine. So there was always some script in my bag for some crazy thing, most of which I will deny ever having been involved in.

Speaking of those early jobs, wasn't one of them dressing up as Cookie Monster?

Oh, yeah, that was a good one. It was for an entertainment company that used to go to weddings and bar mitzvahs, and I would be there as entertainment. I had to dress up in a costume and get out on the dance floor and pull people up, which was not me. I'm usually the person sitting in the back of the room at a wedding, hoping nobody bothers me, so it made no sense at all, but it was still 75 bucks for the day. . . . I had to put on a gigantic Cookie Monster head with a little scrim to see through. At one point, I was doing some kind of dance, and I went like this , and the scrim was over here . It was just a nightmare. But every drop of it led me here. 

Have you been on "Sesame Street"?

I have, with Elmo.

Not with Cookie Monster?

He's not speaking to me.

In the fall, you start season 3 of "Nurse Jackie." I guess they haven't given you an inkling of what's happening next season?

No. I know they're very excited about it and have all kinds of ideas and story lines, but I'm not interested in knowing them until it's in front of me. If I know about it too far in advance, I start working already. So by the time we get to shooting it, it's old, it's not fresh anymore. So I'd rather not know.

When you were at Northport High School, you played Eliza Doolittle. Would you like to do a musical?

I would love to do a musical. I'm certainly not a singer like these Broadway singers, but I could do Brecht. I could carry a tune. . . . It was a big deal that I played Eliza Doolittle because I was very, very shy. Even auditioning for it was almost impossible.

How were you?

You know, I don't remember. I haven't the foggiest notion, but I'd be very curious to see it now and wonder. I hope I wouldn't cringe.