Marisa Tomei biography

Synopsis

Early Career

Actress. Born December 4, 1964, in Brooklyn, New York. While attending Boston University, Marisa Tomei was cast in the CBS daytime soap opera As the World Turns; she subsequently left school and played the teenager Marcy Thompson on the show from 1983 to 1985. She made her feature film debut in 1984 in The Flamingo Kid, starring Matt Dillon. After leaving As the World Turns, she appeared in Off-Broadway productions like Daughters (1985) before moving to Los Angeles. In 1987, she landed a role as a roommate of Lisa Bonet's character during the first season of the sitcom A Different World, a short-lived spinoff of The Cosby Show.

Oscar Win

After her next major film, Oscar (1991), starring Sylvester Stallone, bombed, Tomei gave what appeared to be a bona fide star-making performance in the 1992 comedy My Cousin Vinny, costarring Joe Pesci and The Karate Kid's Ralph Macchio. Critics agreed that Tomei's sharp comedic performance as Mona Lisa Vito, the wisecracking auto mechanic who falls in love with Pesci's Vinny, merited good reviews and even the Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress she received. When the 27-year-old Marisa Tomei's name was read aloud on Oscar night as the winner, however (she beat out four well respected British actresses: Judy Davis, Joan Plowright, Miranda Richardson, and Vanessa Redgrave), the shock was almost universal, and nasty rumors persisted that the award's presenter, the elderly Jack Palance, had read the wrong name.

Tomei's Oscar win failed to produce the kind of career boost usually expected, as she went on to star in a number of films that didn't do justice to her talents and that barely made it onto the radar screen at the box office. She gave a good performance as the silent screen actress Mabel Normand in Chaplin (1992), starring Robert Downey Jr., but her first project as a romantic lead, in the weepy romance Untamed Heart (1993), costarring Christian Slater, was a critical and commercial disappointment. Tomei next appeared opposite Michael Keaton in The Paper and reteamed with Robert Downey Jr. in Only You (both 1994).

Indie Films

After costarring with veteran actresses Anjelica Huston (1995's The Perez Family) and Gena Rowlands (1996's Unhook the Stars), she earned her best reviews since My Cousin Vinny for the eccentric comedy Slums of Beverly Hills (1998), in which she played the flaky cousin of the main character, a precocious teenage girl played by Natasha Lyonne.