Academy Award-winning actress Marisa Tomei fulfilled her dream of doubling the square footage of her Manhattan apartment, thus satisfying her great passion for beautiful things.
Since childhood," says Marisa Tomei, "I've wanted to live in a wonderful house where I could dance and dance without stopping." She followed her dance lessons with passion, imagining that one day she would pirouette through the rooms of an urban-chic Manhattan apartment.
Also in childhood, Marisa developed a passion for furniture, as she used to go with her mother to antique markets in New York. "My mother liked to refurbish and repaint furniture, and I liked to watch her." Marisa admits that she still looks at furniture items listed on the Internet. "After long hours of work, I like to look at beautiful things.
It's a habit that calms me down.
Combining the two apartments proved to be no easy task. Her old living room, along with her office and terrace, were transformed into a bedroom, while her old bedroom materialized into a childhood dream: a spacious dressing room.
By removing some walls of the adjoining apartment, the actress managed to create a living room with ample open spaces that reveal the beauty of Manhattan, as if it were an added photograph.
Marisa decorated a large part of the apartment using her passion and good taste developed since childhood. She got involved in painting the walls and collected furniture and decorations from most of the places she visited. For example, during a film festival in Morocco, she ran for a few hours looking for a rug for her living room.
At that time, I was so caught up in the fever of transforming the apartment that I found myself in an antique market in New York and at the same time bidding on the phone for a few chairs dating back to the 1940s that I wanted for my bedroom," she tells us. "And I got them!
To benefit from the perfect help in the interior design she desired, Marisa hired an interior designer, Alexandra Hayden, to coordinate the decoration of the apartment alongside her. "I always knew when Marisa was on set," says Hayden, "because I would wake up in the morning and find 100 links to objects she was looking at during filming.
