US actress Denise Borino-Quinn, who played a mafia wife on The Sopranos, has died of cancer aged 46.

She unexpectedly won the role after attending an open casting call to support a childhood friend in 2000.

Borino-Quinn played Ginny Sacrimoni, the mafia wife with a weight problem on the massively successful television drama on cable station HBO.

The Farmer Funeral Home in New Jersey said she died on Wednesday after a long battle with liver cancer.

Her husband, Luke Quinn Jr, died in March.

Her Sopranos role was her first foray into acting and her character was instantly popular with fans of the show.

Borino-Quinn beat 14,000 other hopefuls to get the part.

Her other job when she was not on the small screen was working in a law firm in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

The award-winning Sopranos ran for eight years until 2007 and centred on the lives of a dysfunctional mob family.