Marisa Tomei: Marisa Darrrling

If it works depends largely on Tomei and Downey Jr.'s chemistry. This is their second movie together, counting Tomei's teensy turn as director-comic Mabel Normand in Chaplin. I suggest Tomei fill in the blank: "Kissing Robert Downey is like..." Her eyes widen, she lets out a howl, and blurts out, "No fucking way. No way at all."

When I ask Tomei if she's romantic, she grins. "I try to follow my passion. I haven't been in love a lot of times. Three times." Is she in love now? I know she recently broke up with a man she met while making the movie. "No, not at this second," she answers. "Well, I mean, only with you, that is."

Humming along with Smokey Robinson on "The Tracks of My Tears," Tomei turns her gaze to her old boyfriend. "Ivan? When I was desperately in love with you, if you can think back that far, I'd play this song on a tape and warm up for a show I was doing. You were my total substitution for the guy I had to be in love with in the show." Ivan salutes her with his drinking glass. "Now, we're like best friends," she says. "I mean, he does come from Beaver, which means there are, ummm, certain advantages."

It seems the moment to ask Tomei for three good reasons why someone should never get romantically entangled with a celebrity. "Their narcissism, their narcissism and their narcissism," she answers. "There is a wound that spurs us to creativity. Otherwise, I really like show people. But the wound, the narcissism that comes from it, alone is a downer enough." What spurs her on in such a tough business? "The cool schedule, the hours," she quips. "I like that. And, seriously, I suppose certain wounds that I'll never know. And I don't want to know. Plus, I have no other skills. And it is fucking fun."

Tomei seems to have a lock these days on most of the better urban-Madonna roles around--she's grabbing all the streetwise, working-class, ethnic-girl parts once pocketed by Lorraine Bracco, Annabella Sciorra, Laura San Giacomo and Madonna herself. In fact, though both Tomei and Madonna nearly played tormented artist Frida Kahlo in duelling bio movies, consider how Tomei has since outstripped Madonna. When the latter pulled out of playing the waitress who falls in love with Christian Slater in Untamed Heart, Tomei did it instead; by the time Madonna was dropped from Angie and reputedly took a pass on It Could Happen to You, Tomei was already in a position to turn down both. And did.

"Yeah, but she was not going to do Just in Time," Tomei fires off. "Angie, well that was a possibility that just didn't work out. Frida [Luis Valdez's Kahlo project] was tossed around and, with Cop Gives Waitress $2 Million Tip [now titled It Could Happen to You], I just opted to do Just in Time instead." So, did Tomei snatch the movie career Madonna might have had? "She snatched my career," Tomei says, laughing, "because I was planning to go on the road and tour with a lot of glue and a lot of wigs and a lot of boys. I mean, damn. I did so want to be a musical star, darrrling. I just can't sing."

But Tomei could still have Madonna's movie career, if she ever again does a corker like Zandalee, a sub Zalman King-esque sextravaganza, in which Tomei plays the white-trashy girlfriend of Big Easy painter Nicolas Cage. "A good late-night video, huh?" she says. "Hey, on that movie, I met Nic Cage for the first time and I worked in New Orleans, which I love. It was like, 'Come to New Orleans and have your own party.'" If fortune continues to smile on her, her Zandalees are behind her. How good is most of the material she reads? "Go to the next question, darrrling. Let me say this, there's always the persistent horror story that there's nothing but horrible material around. But I've felt lucky. The next project, The Perez Family, I feel great about."

I ask about other films she almost made, or wanted but didn't get. "Well, I nearly did Jungle Fever," she recalls, "but couldn't because it was at the same time as My Cousin Vinny. I almost did Four Weddings and a Funeral and I was really close on Mad Dog and Glory, which I wanted to do. I was in rehearsals for Hell Camp, a movie I was going to shoot in Japan for Milos Forman [but after] Sony bought Columbia, they pulled the plug. Milos was so upset. He suspected that something about the movie offended Japanese sensibilities, even though he kept saying, 'This movie is a love letter, a looove letter.' I'll go to movies that I nearly was in and go, 'Ohhh, why didn't I do that?' But, in the end, I see how it wouldn't have been right for me. Not just for my career. For whatever reason, that wasn't a movie for me. I feel I've made good decisions. I'm happy with what I've decided to do."

Does she admire her competition? "Jodie Foster," she answers, like a shot, "gives the best interviews. That's every thinking girl's fantasy. Every thinking actress's fantasy. Sometimes, I think about her and go, 'Oh, just give it up now.' But, you know, in terms of projects, I go through the same filter-down process for scripts from those 'top five gals' everyone talks about. I'm always in the position where I'm not necessarily somebody's first choice. It's par for the course--I haven't made a movie that's made a lot of money. Vinny made money, but not the 'superstar' amount of money. Let's say I have a while to go before I'd think about developing projects for myself. Do I personally make a lot of money? Yeah. How else, darrrling, could I treat everyone tonight?"

I ask her, since she once played a waitress, what is Hollywood's obsession with portraying hash slingers as earthy, worldly sages? I mean, think Michelle Pfeiffer in Frankie and Johnny, Lily Tomlin in Short Cuts, Susan Sarandon in White Palace and Thelma & Louise. "It's more like how come all actresses have been waitresses?" she observes. "It's a fantasy that men have. They serve food, which is kind of like a mommy thing, huh? Also, lots of people who have been starving artists, like actors and writers, have been waiters and waitresses. It's a world that they know and they probably tap into that."

For now, Tomei has her sights set on wider-ranging roles. She played Michael Keaton's pregnant wife in The Paper, about which she says little beyond, "We were all going fast on that one." She is already shooting her Cuban movie--which she refuses to acknowledge sounds anything like the deadly Greta Scacchi/Jimmy Smits movie, Fires Within--and alludes to several more tantalizing possibilities. But what about that much-talked-about, but never delivered, sequel to My Cousin Vinny? Or is Joe Pesci too big a pain in the butt to work with again? "No, not at all," she says, "not to me." How could she possibly spark such chemistry with such a nudge? "It's got to be reincarnation, right? Karma? We got along like wildfire," she says. "We have a common sense of humor, a family, neighborhoody kind of thing, ya know? There were these strange things that we have in common. He was always like, 'You know what you're doing. Don't let anybody tell you you don't. Go for it.' The day of the Oscars, we had rehearsals because we presented together," she continues. "He looked right into my eyes and said, 'No matter what happens, don't you worry about it. I know that you're great and I love you.' Anyway, when I got offstage, he was the first one I saw and he said he was really proud of me. He gave me a lot of confidence. He's very generous and he has a great fucking sense of humor. What's so great about this business is that you have friends of all ages, people you wouldn't necessarily get a chance to meet in another business."

Yeah, so if they're so chummy, where's the movie, already? "I saw a script. Then they said they were going to rewrite it, but I haven't seen that yet and I haven't heard a thing about it," Tomei explains. "Timing's the thing. It depends on when and all that. I'm sure that we'd have a good time again--we were in a groove together. So, another one, why not?" But, surely, if she has high aspirations for her screen career, she might harbor some reservations about backtracking, some nervousness about letting pop-culture historians view her merely as Vinny's squeeze. What does she hope a future encyclopedia of actors might say about her? She makes a face and, doing an accent that's pure Olive Oyl, she says, "Her teeth were her claim to fame. She couldn't act her way out of a box."

Before we take our separate cabs, I ask Tomei what she wants out of her career. "To be able to fly with people who are just so fucking brilliant. To reach the heights with other artists," she says, "and to have a good time. I think the fantasy of being a movie star is more powerful than the reality. So, for me, even if it's not a great film or a great play I'm doing, to know that you went for it. You had an experience that made you grow artistically and personally. What's really satisfying is knowing that you did a good job." So, how good a job does she think she did on this interview? "I'll only know when it comes out," she answers. "And you know I'll completely deny everything about the beaver, darrrling."

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Stephen Rebello interviewed Drew Barrymore for the April Movieline.

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