“My hair? Oh, I dyed it blond for a whim, and now I’ve decided to keep it for my next picture,” says Marisa Tomei, resplendent in white hair that contrasts dramatically with her olive complexion and brown eyes.
“I think blond hair will apply better to the next character I play anyway.”
Tomei seemed to appear out of nowhere to win an Oscar two years ago as Best Supporting Actress in “My Cousin Vinny’ ” and a 1993 Chicago Film Critics Association Award for her role as a Brooklyn babe.
Ever since, the effervescent Italian-American actress has gone to considerable effort to mold herself into different characters on screen.
Tomei is prone to giggle frequently and betray her nasal New York accent from time to time. But she is an appealing, down-to-earth woman who is keen to resist any desires the system might have to typecast her, even if her breakthrough film role did have her gum-chewing her way through a personification of an archetypal Brooklyn babe.
Behind the giggles and the warm smiles is a woman determined to be taken seriously as an actress.
Tomei followed up on “Vinny” by being the hopeless romantic in “Only You,” something of a doe-eyed victim in “Untamed Heart” and most recently an earthy and sensual Cuban refugee determined to become an American in “The Perez Family.”
She played those roles in her natural, dark brown hair color, so it takes some getting used to seeing her as a bleached blond in the midday sun on the Majestic Beach during the Cannes Film Festival.
“I like the change,” she says, smiling.
Tomei has shed most of the extra 20 pounds she put on to play Dottie Perez in “The Perez Family,” a role she thought required a more voluptuous figure. She gained the weight by adopting Robert De Niro’s secret of eating every two hours and loading her diet with dairy products, meat and doughnuts.
“I needed to have some meat on me,” she says. “Dottie’s a female character who’s round and earthy, and that’s part of why I did the film. I don’t really like junk food, so doughnuts were the worst of it. But I tried to have a milkshake a day, steaks, all those things.”
To date, her character in the romantic comedy about Cubans arriving in Florida in the 1980 Mariel boatlift is her favorite role, she says.
“I really loved Dottie; it was a great time working on that film and being in her skin. She’s probably more outrageous and daring than me, but there are a lot of aspects of the real me in her.
“What’s wonderful about her is she’s honest and has a great sense of humor, but she’s also sexual. So often in films these things can’t coexist in female characters–to be a good person and sexual as well. I loved playing that.
“It’s actually harder for me to play things like `Only You’ and `Untamed Heart,’ roles which were more kind of conventional.”
Playing a Cuban raises the inevitable comparisons between her Italian heritage and Latino culture. Tomei doesn’t like to compare the cultures, but she recognizes similarities and differences.
“I think there are some similarities, like passion and a love of music. I learned how to samba and all that.
“From the Cuban people I met filming in Miami, I think there is more of a sense of humor towards the tragedies as a people they’ve gone through.
“The Italians just seem to get ,” she says with a laugh. “I liked that about the Cubans, there’s drama and comedy happening at the same time.
“The thing is, I grew up in New York, so I feel like I identify with many cultures. I don’t separate things racially in my mind. I think one of the beauties of acting is you do gain compassion when you learn about other people’s points of view.”
At 30, Tomei doesn’t have a long track record in films. Rather, she has devoted much of her time to the stage in New York. Her credits include Nicky Silver’s recent off-Broadway production of “Fat Men in Skirts,” “The Rose Tattoo,” “The Aven’u Boys” and “Slavs.” She’s a regular member of the Naked Angels Theatre Company.
Weaving between theater and film roles is a deliberate attempt to develop herself as an actress and to keep Hollywood at a distance, she maintains.
“I took five months off after shooting `The Perez Family’ and did an off-Broadway play for three months because I had to digest all that has happened to me.
“I didn’t want to get caught up in a hectic pace of film work, you know, doing one after the other. I want to make sure my acting gets deeper and deeper.
“When you get success like this you also need time to stop and think. I also like doing plays because of the immediate reactions you get from the audience, and the characters are usually more avant-garde.”
(Her most recent theater role was as a punkish lesbian security guard who had to protect the preserved brains of the great Russian leaders in “Slavs”).
“I like the process of theater; it comes in a more natural way and flows better. I like feeling the audience get the words.
“I think my strength as an actress is I can bring a sense of humor to things, even if it’s not a comedy. It’s an element that will be floating through the character whatever I do.
“I think I’m also very detail orientated, and that can be very helpful for filmmaking. I can take direction pretty well.”
Winning a Best Supporting Actress Oscar still reverberates through her career, Tomei concedes. It certainly made the Hollywood studios sit up and take notice.
“Winning the Oscar was a bit of a unique situation. I don’t have anything to compare it to in terms of changing my life; it was just a movie I did. Just getting to work in movies changed my life really.
“The Oscar probably means now I get better parts. It’s like I didn’t get to make those bad films, make all my mistakes and then learn my craft. I got the Oscar and then the attention was focused on me. Probably I’ve had to grow up in front of people more.”
One casualty of bursting into the celebrity spotlight was her five-year relationship to playwright Frank Pugliese. The couple shared a small Greenwich Village apartment until Tomei left last year. The pressures of her career and the cramped space contributed to the split, she says.
“The problem was represented by physical space, but it was about emotional space in my life too. And having to be responsible for somebody else. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was about space closing in.
“I really feel I have the potential to be a great actress, so for me now it’s a matter of fulfilling my potential.”
Next up she is teaming with Gerard Depardieu and Gena Rowlands in a film about three people’s friendship in a small Midwest town.
“It’s called `Unhook the Stars,’ and it features these three people who have an unexpected hookup. I’m going to play Gena’s character’s neighbor who has a little son. It’s being shot in Utah but as a sort of Midwest setting.”
With her 20s over, Tomei is hopeful that some good roles may be on the horizon. The difficult years are behind her now, she says.
“I know it’s hard to find really good scripts, period, and I think that applies to men and women. But I think often they skip women in their 20s because no one really understands women at that age. It’s a strange time.”
