Marisa
For many would-be actresses, the path from audition studio to sound stage is a tough trip all the way. But for Marisa Berenson, haute couture mannequin and aspiring film star, the route is being negotiated with ease. She will be appearing around Christmastime in the film version of Cabaret, in a featured role she enacts with the éclat of a trouper. While it's tempting to trace this self-assurance to her singular success as a model or to what one fashion authority has called "the chic face" that ensured it, Marisa's is a confidence born in the blood; she's a Schiaparelli--of perfume and salon fame--and a Berenson, grandniece of the late art collector and critic Bernard Berenson. Though New York born, Marisa has lived in Europe for most of her 24 years. Educated in London and on the Continent, she speaks four languages--an ability that attractively augments her more obvious assets, which are hardly lost in translation. She began modeling in 1966, but after a trip to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's ashram in India--and especially after her film debut last summer in Luchino Visconti's Death in Venice--Marisa started to find couture "static and less rewarding than acting."
Marisa
"Cabaret is a strong film," says Marisa, "and quite tragic. Even though the dialog is comical, there's an undercurrent of fear and decadence in it that mounts to a terrifying degree." Under the direction of Bob Fosse, she plays Natalia Landauer, a rich Jewish girl hypnotized by the gay enticements of Berlin café society just before the rise of the Nazis. The filming, she feels, was "a crash course in the technical aspects of drama" that has added immeasurably to her experience and poise as an actress. If a blend of beauty, intelligence and self-possession can propel anyone to screen stardom--as it sent Marisa straight to the top in fashion--there seems little doubt that Miss Berenson is destined to fulfill her great expectations.
