Marisa Berenson

Vittoria Marisa Schiaparelli Berenson (born February 15, 1947) is an American actress and former model. She appeared on the front covers of Vogue and Time, and won the National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Natalia Landauer in the 1972 film Cabaret. The role also earned her Golden Globe and BAFTA Award nominations. Her other film appearances include Death in Venice (1971), Barry Lyndon (1975), S.O.B. (1981), and I Am Love (2009).

In 2001, she made her Broadway debut in the revival of Design for Living.

Berenson was born in New York City, the elder of two daughters. Her father, Robert Lawrence Berenson, was an American career diplomat turned shipping executive. He was of Russian Jewish and Polish Jewish descent; the family's original paternal surname was Valvrojenski. Her mother was Maria-Luisa Yvonne "Gogo" Radha de Wendt Schiaparelli, a socialite of Italian, Swiss and French descent.

Berenson's maternal grandmother was the fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli, and her maternal grandfather was Wilhelm de Wendt de Kerlor, a theosophist and psychic medium.

Her younger sister, Berinthia, became a model, actress, and photographer, and was known as Berry Berenson. She was married to actor Anthony Perkins. Berry Berenson died on September 11, 2001 in New York City, as a passenger on American Airlines Flight 11.

Berenson and her sister are also great-grandnieces of Giovanni Schiaparelli, an Italian astronomer who was the first to describe the canals of Mars. They are second cousins, once removed, of art expert Bernard Berenson and his sister Senda Berenson, an athlete and educator who was one of the first two women elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame.

A fashion model discovered as a teenager by Vogue editor Diana Vreeland, Berenson came to prominence in the 1960s. She appeared on the cover of the July 1970 issue of Vogue as well as the cover of Time on December 15, 1975. She appeared in numerous fashion layouts in Vogue in the late 1960s and early 1970s. She was known as "The Queen of the Scene" for her frequent appearances at nightclubs and other social venues in her youth, and Yves Saint Laurent dubbed her "the girl of the Seventies".

Berenson's early film roles included Gustav von Aschenbach's wife in Luchino Visconti's 1971 film Death in Venice and the Jewish department store heiress Natalia Landauer in the 1972 film Cabaret. The latter role led to two Golden Globe nominations, a BAFTA nomination, and an award from the National Board of Review.