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Info about Marissa

On the big screen, in 2007, Marisa played the edgy and gorgeous girlfriend of Paul Rudd (”40 Year Old Virgin”,” Anchorman”) who plays the Drug Lord in Comedy Central’s “Reno 911!: Miami”.

She is also starring in the upcoming film “Everybody Wants To Be Italian”, a story about how two non-Italians pretend to be Italian to win each other’s hearts in Boston’s North End, slated to hit theaters in September.

Marisa first started performing at the age of four when she began entering beauty pageants. At age eight, this New Jersey native who speaks Italian/Abbruzzese dialect, began to take trips to New York to study acting at the highly acclaimed HB Studio.

Marisa continued competing in pageants and in 1996 she won the title of Miss Italia USA and placed in the Top Five for the title of Miss Italia World that same year (she is first generation Italian and Argentinean). Nonetheless, being a performer all her life she knew that her passion and talent truly lied in acting. In 1997, the New Jersey native drove across country to Hollywood to pursue her acting career. Giving herself a five-year deadline to make it in Hollywood, she was pleasantly surprised when offered the principal role on a national commercial directed by David Lynch only a few weeks after arriving in Los Angeles. From there, Marisa found herself booking small roles in hit films such as MGM’s “Pumpkin” and Columbia Pictures’ “Tomcats”. It wasn’t too long before she found herself working regularly on a number of shows including “Scrubs”, “Las Vegas”, “According to Jim”, and Comedy Central’s hit show “Reno 911!” just to name a few. As a cancer survivor of Rhabdomyosarcoma (a rare childhood cancer that affects the muscles), Marisa volunteers her time to helping personal individuals who have been diagnosed with cancer and are undergoing chemotherapy. She makes phone calls to friends and fans who have contacted her after finding out about her struggle with cancer through “Deal or No Deal”. Because Marisa is so outspoken about her battle with Rhabdomyosarcoma, a contestant on “Deal or No Deal” donated 10% of his winnings to the organization that helped her cause - The Tomorrow’s Children Fund.

In August 2007, Marisa began working with the Sarcoma Foundation of America, an organization dedicated to finding new therapies to treat sarcoma, to promote awareness and the research needs of sarcoma patients. She is currently being considered as the 2008 spokesperson for the foundation.

Other 2007 highlights include being the Commencement Speaker at Kean University in New Jersey (her alma mater) as well as being honored as the “Italian-American Woman of the Year.”