Carol Ann Susi (February 2, 1952 – November 11, 2014) was an American actress whose career spanned 40 years. She debuted as the recurring character of semi-competent but likable intern Monique Marmelstein on Kolchak: The Night Stalker. More than three decades and countless supporting roles later, her level of celebrity was elevated for having provided the voice of recurring off-screen character Mrs. Wolowitz, mother of Howard Wolowitz, on the television series The Big Bang Theory.
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Career
Susi made her first on-screen appearance in Kolchak: The Night Stalker, where she played the recurring role of news service intern Monique Marmelstein. Other television and film credits included: McMillan & Wife, Coyote Ugly, Just Go with It, The Big Bang Theory, Cheers, Becker, Something So Right, Generations, the 1990 biker comedy Masters of Menace, Grey's Anatomy, That '70s Show, Out of Practice, Cats & Dogs, Just Shoot Me, Married... with Children, Night Court, The King of Queens, Death Becomes Her, NYPD Blue, Seinfeld, The Secret of My Success, My Blue Heaven, and Sabrina, the Teenage Witch. She also had extensive experience in live theatre and voiced a character on the video game adaptation of CSI: NY.
Personal life
Susi was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1952 to an Italian-American family. She graduated from Franklin Delano Roosevelt High School in Brooklyn in 1970. She studied acting at HB Studio in New York City before moving to Los Angeles in the 1970s.
Death
Susi died of cancer on November 11, 2014, in Los Angeles, California, at age 62. She had been diagnosed a week before her death. She is interred at the Saint Charles Cemetery in East Farmingdale, New York. Her character on The Big Bang Theory, Mrs. Wolowitz, was mourned after the character died in the series' eighth-season episode "The Comic Book Store Regeneration" broadcast on February 19, 2015. The characters toast to her in an uncharacteristically somber ending, in homage to Susi.
