Lainie Kazan
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Lainie Kazan (born May 15, 1940) is an American actress and singer. She was nominated for the 1988 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series for St. Elsewhere and the 1993 Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for My Favorite Year. She was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for her role in My Favorite Year (1982). Kazan played Maria Portokalos in My Big Fat Greek Wedding and its sequel film My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2.

Kazan was born Lainie Levine in Brooklyn, New York City, The daughter of Carole (née Kazan) and Ben Levine, Kazan's mother was Sephardic Jewish whose family came from Jerusalem, her father was of Russian Ashkenazi Jewish descent and worked as a gambling bookmaker. Kazan has described her mother as "neurotic, fragile and artistic." She attended Brooklyn's Erasmus Hall High School, where she was a senior while Barbra Streisand, whom she would later understudy, was a sophomore. Kazan went on to graduate from Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, on Long Island, in 1960. While at Hofstra, Kazan appeared in school musicals written and directed by a fellow classmate, future Academy Award-winning director Francis Ford Coppola.