Penny Marshall ✝

Carole Penny Marshall (born October 15, 1943) is an American actress, director and producer. She is the daughter of Marjorie Marshall, a tap dance teacher, and Tony Marshall, a film director and producer. Her parents\' background in entertainment, along with her brother, Garry Marshall\'s, background as a comedy writer and her sister\'s background as a casting director and producer, gave rise to Marshall\'s career in the industry. She rose to fame in the 1970s for her role as Laverne DeFazio on the television sitcom Laverne & Shirley (1976–1983), receiving three nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy for her portrayal.\n', ' Marshall progressed to directing films in the 1980s, making her directorial debut with Jumpin\' Jack Flash (1986) before directing Big (1988), which became the first film directed by a woman to gross in excess of $100 million at the U.S. box office. Her subsequent directing credits have included Awakenings (1990), which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, A League of Their Own (1992), Renaissance Man (1994), The Preacher\'s Wife (1996), and Riding in Cars with Boys (2001). She has also produced Cinderella Man (2005) and Bewitched (2005), as well as episodes of the sitcom According to Jim.\n', ' Carole Penny Marshall was born in The Bronx, New York City, New York, on October 15, 1943, to Marjorie Irene (née Ward; 1908–1983), a tap dance teacher who ran the Marjorie Marshall Dance School, and Anthony "Tony" Masciarelli (1906–1999), later Marshall, a director of industrial films and later a producer. She is the sister of actor/director/TV producer Garry Marshall and Ronny Hallin, a television producer. She began her career as a tap dancer at age three, and later taught tap at her mother\'s dance school. Her birth name, Carole, was selected because her mother\'s favorite actress was Carole Lombard. Her middle name was selected because her older sister, Ronny, wanting a horse in the Bronx, was saving her pennies; her mother chose the middle name in an attempt to console her.\n', '