Marisa Tomei
Marisa Tomei
Marisa Tomei is an American actress. In a career spanning three decades, Tomei had initial success in films as a young actress, followed by a series of unsuccessful films, then a resurgence with a series of critically acclaimed films. Following her work on the television series As the World Turns, she came to prominence as a cast member on The Cosby Show spin-off A Different World in 1987. After having minor roles in a few films, she came to international...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMovie Actress
Date of Birth4 December 1964
CityBrooklyn, NY
CountryUnited States of America
You have your structure, but within it, it gets fuller and you can highlight other parts of the performance.
I found it very frustrating to play her, actually,
Film, there's this whole allure because it just lasts and lasts, but I think the allure for me of doing a play is that it's almost like the sand paintings they make in Venice. It just goes away after one time, and that's it. You had to be there that one night to be part of that.
Unfortunately, very often in roles you're only wanted to stand there and be sweet. That's why I'm drawn back to roles in theater.
A big factor that influences me, ... is the integrity level of the person at the helm, who's going to be the director.
He was in a troubled time of his life, and regular therapy wasn't working. So there was this spiritual psychiatrist that I took him to, and afterwards I said, 'Can I ask her? Can I talk to her?' So I said to her, 'Well, what do you think?' She said, 'Well, you know, he thinks he's an alien,'
I'm not that big a fan of marriage as an institution and I don't know why women need to have children to be seen as complete human beings.
I did ask Larry David, "How did I get so lucky? How am I here [Seinfeld]?" He just said, 'Well, when you say your name over and over it just has a really strong rhythm: "Marisa Tomei. Marisa Tomei."
Her [Aunt May] values and his [ Spiderman] traumas are kind of what's defined him as a young boy and now that he's becoming a young man, she's there to provide that safe place where he can still be a kid if he needs to be, or know that he has a home base as he's going through all these physical changes. So as long as those essentials are there, we can work on finding the character together.
It's really fun working on this Marvel movie [ Spiderman]. The essentials of Aunt May are that she's helped raise Spiderman and she's his moral compass.
I am really touched and surprised that your generation [of millenials] feels that way, and I'm really happy the work stands up. But that show [Seinfeld] is going to stand up for all time: it's one of the greatest things that has ever been written, and still speaks to the quirks of being a human being no matter what the era.
I'm the luckiest women because I do get to spend a lot of time with Gloria Steinem , and not necessarily talking about the show [ HBO's Ms.] - but talking whatever she's working on, and going to events with her.
In cultural history, the civil rights movement came before the women's movement.
There's a pattern of the pathway opening in a certain way. We stared thinking, there's so many wonderful films about civil rights movements, but there isn't even one yet about the women's movement? It's hard to capture because it's so sprawling, and it's an ideology.