“The film industry has decided that I’m already a Lelchin guy”

When it was revealed in July 2015 that actress Marisa Tomei had been cast as Peter Parker/Spider-Man’s loyal sidekick Aunt May in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), fans didn’t react well.

“I was lucky not to know more about Aunt May, because I would have been horrified to see the original vision of a white-haired retiree. Don’t play with my heart, Marvel. Do you really see me like that?” Tomei joked in a interview a few years ago later.

Tomei was 50 at the time, but she didn’t look old at all. Neither her body nor her face suggest that she has half a century behind her. So the new, younger version of Spider-Man, played by Tom Holland, has a new Aunt May to guide him through life – and this May is younger too… and hotter.

The Oscar winner, however, defends the new take on her character. However, in his first screen appearance, the new Spidey is a 15-year-old student, which justifies his aunt being younger.

Tomei even asks her brother Adam, a fan of comics since childhood, and he explains that Aunt May and Peter Parker are not related by blood: she is married to Peter’s uncle Ben.

“So she may be older or quite young depending on when she met her husband,” Tomei commented. She even had her version — which he points out wasn’t in the script — imagining May as a student of Uncle Ben’s.

According to her, casting her in the role wasn’t about Hollywood’s negative attitude towards older actors. Tomei, as she herself revealed in an interview with the “Guardian”, believes that the biggest problem of the film industry is sexism.

Sexism research data indicates that approximately 33% of supporting roles and only 22% of leading roles are for women, which is to say that they are definitely out of balance. According to Tomei, when you add other factors, such as age, the chances of an actress landing a “big role” decrease even further.

“Sexism is part of the culture, that’s a fact, but we can try to change that culture. I like to believe that things have changed in this century since we got the right to vote,” she added.

“The industry decided I was already a Lelchin type,” the actress says of her career development.

And maybe she’s right: in the film The King of Staten Island (2020), she plays the mother of Pete Davidson’s character (“We never talk about motherhood”, she jokes in an interview).

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Photo: Getty Images

Tomei, 57, in November 2022.

Tomei’s big break came three decades ago: she played the role of Mona Lisa, the girlfriend of Joe Pesci’s character in the film “My Cousin Vinny” (1992). He also won an ‘Oscar’ for a female supporting role for her.

“Oscar”, which she is not sure where it is today.

“I bet it’s at my mom’s, but I haven’t actually seen it around her house,” she says in an interview with The Rolling Stones in Spring 2022. To check, text her mom. A little later she receives an answer:

“I just saw him the other day [“Оскар”-а]I moved it to the closet,” the mother writes to her, making her daughter laugh.

The movie doesn’t even feel all that special to Marissa — she says she’s never seen it on TV, and the last time she saw it was probably “30 years ago.”

However, she doesn’t deny the benefit of her role in it and especially the Oscar she won – so she found commitments in Hollywood much easier, after she failed to break through in her early 20s.

Over the years, she has been nominated for an Oscar twice – always for a supporting role – in the films ‘In the Bedroom’ (2001) and ‘The Wrestler’ (2008). She describes herself as “a leading actress caught in a whirlwind of supporting roles”.

It was around ‘The Wrestler’ that she discovered an age advantage: She became more confident in her body.

In director Darren Aronofsky’s film, she, 44 at the time, played a stripper, which also involved nudity – a commitment that is always a double-edged sword for actors and which she avoided when she was younger.

“It was something to stay away from if you wanted to prove you were a serious actress,” says Marissa.

“Doing it later in life is the opposite of doing it while you’re younger, because it brings a different kind of believability,” she says, also sharing how pleasantly surprised she was by her body.

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Photo: Getty Images

Marissa and Robert Downey Jr.

Meanwhile, in the years following the Oscars, she starred in a number of romantic comedies, sometimes with her ex-boyfriend Robert Downey Jr. The two also share a scene in Captain America: Civil War, where the new version of Spider-Man and his “Aunt May” make their screen debut.

In fact, it was Downey Jr. who recommended her for the role in the comic book franchise. Her character was present in all three independent films about the superhero played by Tom Holland, and in the last of them-“Spider-Man: No Way Home”, she was also the emotional center of the story.

Perhaps Tomei is right about being the lead actress in a whirlwind of supporting roles. But even when she’s in them, she approaches them with a search for spiritual inspiration and deeper meaning. This is how he keeps the “flame in himself” and keeps his interest in the production.

And no wonder, after a while, whether she plays someone’s aunt or mother, she remembers herself again with a performance worthy of at least an Oscar nomination.