Nancy E. Carroll

MILTON, Mass. - Nancy E. Carroll, 70, an award-winning actress whose nearly 50-year career spanned the stage, television and film, died Dec. 24 at AccentCare-Inpatient Hospice Center in Milton following a lengthy battle with cancer.

She was a long-time resident of her beloved Rockport, Massachusetts.

Her work in regional, off-Broadway and Broadway theater encompassed more than 140 productions in nearly every imaginable genre, from musicals to Shakespeare to Ibsen, from one-woman shows to experimental plays. Her vast repertoire ranged from portraying a 140-year-old woman to a gorilla (without a costume) to an ancient priest. She also embraced mastering dialects, from Irish to French to Cockney.

“Nancy E. Carroll is known in Boston theater for owning every role she takes on,” a Boston Globe reviewer wrote in 2014.

Carroll won the Boston Theater Critics Association’s Elliot Norton Award in 2002 for outstanding actress in the Súgán Theatre Company’s production of “Bailegangaire.” In 2008, she won the award twice for roles in “Present Laughter” and “Brendan,” both produced by Boston’s Huntington Theatre.

The Independent Reviews of New England (IRNE) awarded her best actress honors in 2004 for “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” and best supporting actress in 2018 for “Precious Little.”

In 2010, Carroll reprised her role in “Present Laughter” in its revival on Broadway - and it was her Broadway debut at age 57. She called it “such a surprise and a gift” in a 2010 Boston Globe interview.

“You walk in, and you see all these flowers and cards and messages from people. You feel a great responsibility,” Carroll said.

She put on her director’s hat in 2018 for the Greater Boston Stage Company’s “Calendar Girls,” a comedy about 11 English women who pose nude for a calendar to raise money for a leukemia fund.

“This play has always been one of my favorites,” Carroll wrote in the play’s program. “I love true stories about people who do a small act out of love and kindness, that they think will go unnoticed, but are thrust into the spotlight unexpectedly as others embrace their courage, spirit and generosity.”

In 2019, Carroll was selected for the Lunt-Fontanne Fellowship Program, led that year by stage, television and film actress Tyne Daly, at the Ten Chimneys estate in Genesee Depot, Wisconsin.

Earlier this year she completed filming for “Boston Strangler,” starring Keira Knightley, scheduled for release next year.

Carroll also had small roles in a number of other films, including “Spotlight” (2015), Woody Allen’s “Irrational Man” (2015), “On Broadway” (2007), “The Love Letter” (1999), “The Crucible” (1996) and “The Good Son” (1993). She also appeared in HBO’s miniseries “Olive Kitteridge” (2014).

Born on Sept. 27, 1952, in Haverhill, Massachusetts, Carroll grew up in Toledo, Ohio. After graduating from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, she appeared in dozens of musicals all over the country, including playing the title role in Worth Gardner’s “Sister Aimee,” based on the life of evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson.

Her musical roles eventually led her to Dan Goggin’s “Nunsense,” a light-hearted look at Catholicism through a group of zany, singing nuns. The musical played in Boston from 1986 to 1988, went on a national, two-year tour and then had a run off-Broadway. Carroll reprised her role for “Nonsense 2: The Sequel.”

She wanted to shake up her career and shift away from musicals in the late 1990s. Playing Kate in “Dancing at Lughnasa” at the Worcester Foothills Theatre in 1997 set her on her new path.

In 2006, she played Winnie in Samuel Beckett’s “Happy Days” produced by the Gloucester Stage Company. The role required her to be buried to her waist in dirt in the first act, and buried to her neck in the second act. And she spent three months learning the massive volume of dialogue because the only other actor in the play only made noises.

“You just think, `Well, this is what it is. This is what it's going to be. If a fly lands on my nose, I have to work with that,’" Carroll said in Boston Globe interview.

She took on a true one-woman role three years later in Joan Didion’s “The Year of Magical Thinking” at the Lyric Stage Company in Boston. A reviewer for The (Quincy, Massachusetts) Patriot Ledger said: “Carroll is the rare actress who has total command of theatrical technique – the modulation of the voice, the change of postures, the judicious use of gesture, the timing of a pause – but also the ability to hide these tricks of the actor’s trade to make you believe in the truth of each moment.”

The Boston Herald called Carroll “a haunting Didion avatar.”

For decades, Carroll tackled her roles the same way: she went to Rockport’s Old Garden Beach to memorize a page or two of dialogue per day so she would have the script memorized by the time rehearsals began.

Carroll is survived by her brothers, James R. Carroll of Alexandria, Virginia, Peter G. Carroll of Canton, Massachusetts, and Sean B. Carroll of Chevy Chase, Maryland; by sisters-in-law Carol Vernon of Alexandria, Maureen Carroll of Canton, and Jamie Carroll of Chevy Chase; by nieces Fiona Carroll of Washington, D.C., Brenna Carroll of Brooklyn, New York, Caitlin Carroll of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, Colleen Trojbom of Gainesville, Florida, and Brianne Carroll and Bridget Carroll, both of Canton; and by nephews Patrick Carroll and Will Van Boldrik, both of Los Angeles, Chris Cambra of Cudahy, Wisconsin, and Joshua Klaiss of Madison, Wisconsin.

Carroll was predeceased by her late former husband, actor Stephen Stilgenbauer.

She was a member of Actors’ Equity, the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, the Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. That latter membership entitled her to vote in certain categories for the Oscars, a task she relished as nominated films annually arrived in her mail.

A private burial will be conducted in Immaculate Conception Cemetery in Methuen, Massachusetts. At Carroll’s request, a celebration of her life is being scheduled for some time in May.

Donations in Carroll’s name may be made to Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) or to Heifer International.

In 2011, Carroll was cast by the Galway-based Druid Theatre Company in “The Cripple of Inishmaan,” which toured Ireland and the United States for five months. The role was followed by another in Druid’s “”Big Maggie.”

“It was just about the best job I’ve ever had,” she told The (Brockton, Massachusetts) Enterprise in 2017. “Ireland is my favorite place in the world. That experience was heaven.”

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