Marisa Tomei was born in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn on Dec. 4, 1964.
Her father, Gary Tomei, was a trial lawyer and her mother, Patricia, an English teacher. She has a brother, Adam. When she and her brother were youngsters the family moved to Manhattan. Since her mother and father were both busy at their jobs, Grandma Rita Tomei looked after the kids.
Marisa had aspirations of being an archeologist but after she saw the play “A Chorus Line” at age 12, she gained reverence for the magic of the theater. She attended and graduated from Edward R. Murrow High School in Brooklyn.
During her junior high school days, Marisa studied acting and dancing. During summer vacation, she was in plays at the Golden Bridge Colony in upstate New York. She attended Boston University for one year, during which she had a six-week career as a waitress at Tony Roma’s. Her father wanted her to return to college but she preferred furthering her career as an actress.
Marisa launched a Hollywood career. Being from Brooklyn, she fit very well into a small role in the film The Flamingo Kid (1984), a coming-of-age story, the setting of which is in Brooklyn, mostly in a beach club. TV also beckoned and she had a role in the soap opera “As The World Turns.” As for major stage roles, her debut was in the play “Daughters,” which won her a Theatre World Award. She was in an off-Broadway play “Beirut,” which won her a Dramalogue Award. When she starred in the afterschool special “Supermom’s Daughter,” she won an Emmy. During TV’s 1987-88 season, Marisa was one of the stars of the series “A Different World.”
A return to the stage found Marisa in “What the Butler Saw.” Then came an appearance in the movie Two for Tijuana. Back to television, she was in the two-hour pilot of “Parker Kane.” Between engagements, she was on stage in New York with the elite group Naked Angels where she met playwright Frank Pugliese.
After roles in the movies Oscar and Chaplin, Marisa landed what is still perhaps her best known part, in the comedy My Cousin Vinny (1992). Employing an unforgettable Brooklyn accent, Marisa stole every scene and has the Oscar to prove it. She played the the girlfriend of Vinny (Joe Pesci), a Brooklyn boy who had gone to law school and failed the bar exam six times, but goes to Alabama to defend a cousin accused of murder.
Tomei’s movies following her Oscar winner were rather obscure and the parts weren’t very juicy. In 1993 The Untamed Heart gave Marisa the role of a bubbly waitress. In Unhook the Stars Marisa plays a hard-living working mother befriended by a widow played by Gena Rowlands. It’s more proof of the versatile talent of the Brooklyn-born actress. In a pivotal night-on-the-town scene, the two mothers get together to drink, flirt and play pool. She commented on her part: “We [she and Rowlands] got to be broads hanging out.” Her character “does a lot of things that only guys do in movies, like race off in a Trans Am.”
Then, in 2002, Tomei was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for In the Bedroom. Tomei plays Natalie, a warmhearted, lower-class single mom who has made two mistakes, marrying an angry rich boy (William Mapother) and then while separated, taking up with Frank Fowler (Nick Stahl). Tomei fought for the part, a woman who combines the sexy and the maternal in a way that prompted the director Todd Field’s “jaw to hit the ground.” He also says of Tomei, “She’s not afraid to get lost. She’s not afraid to stumble. She’s looking for it to be messy.”
Tomei says, “I think you have to have a certain confidence that comes across on the screen. And I think I got away from that a little bit.” Then she adds, “I love acting so much. I just really have this belief that that’s what I’m supposed to be doing.”
In 2009 she was nominated again for Best Supporting Actress for her work in The Wrestler, starring Mickey Rourke in a comeback role.
Other Tomei films include, Equinox (’93), Only You (’94), The Perez Family (’94), Four Rooms (’95), A Brother’s Kiss (’97), What Women Want (’00), Alfie (2004) and Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (2007).
— Vernon Parker
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