Penny Marshall | Biography

Despite her enormous success as an actress and major motion picture director, Penny Marshall is still notoriously known for her incredibly low self-esteem. "Penny Marshall has been putting herself down too long to quit cold turkey," explains Joe Morgenstern in Playboy. "She still shrugs her self-deprecating shrug, still whines her self-doubting whine. Nevertheless, she has started sifting through evidence that she may actually be good at her new career." Marshall became a household name when she portrayed the wacky, wise-cracking, milk- and-Pepsi-drinking Laverne De Fazio on the popular prime-time sitcom Laverne and Shirley from 1976 to 1983. The switch from comedic actress to major motion picture director came unexpectedly in 1985, but Marshall's new career is progressing rapidly--her films include such box-office smash hits as Big, Awakenings, and A League of Their Own. "Fifteen years after Laverne and Shirley made her a famous bottlecapper,... [Marshall] has evolved into a frazzled...
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