Debi Mazar

Debi Mazar mixed dyes and applied makeup bases in the dressing rooms of the New York nightlife scene long before anyone knew her name. Her face had something of the silent film stars, but with the toughness of someone who grew up in Queens in the sixties.

She did Madonna's makeup in her early days and ended up appearing in her videos purely out of aesthetic momentum.

In 1990, Martin Scorsese landed the role of Sandy in Goodfellas. That shoot was her baptism by fire and pulled her out from behind the makeup brushes for good, putting her in front of the camera. She had no formal acting training, but her presence was so authentic that she didn't need to fake the accent or the gestures.

That shoot was her baptism by fire.

The Asphalt of New York and the Offices of Hollywood

Her raspy voice worked like a hammer. In the nineties she took on one TV project after another, such as Civil Wars and L.A. Law, where she played the tough woman who won't take no for an answer. She worked nonstop on productions that aimed for that New York flavor that is so hard to replicate in a recording studio.

But it was her role as Shauna in Entourage that brought her back to the center of the spotlight in 2004. She played a publicist who pulled the strings of a movie star with astonishing bite. **Her character was based on Mark Wahlberg's real-life publicist**, and her on-screen presence balanced out the show's tone.

And the gamble paid off.

Despite her success on HBO's comedy, she never abandoned independent film. She appeared in movies by directors such as Spike Lee and Woody Allen. On those sets she felt at ease, because the Los Angeles industry always struck her as a strange place where people pretended far too much.

The Madrid Connection and a Refuge in Tuscany

In 2002 she married chef Gabriele Corcos, and her life began to be split between film sets and food. But acting remained her main drive. Paco León recruited her in 2018 to bring Ava Gardner to life in the series Arde Madrid.

It was a major challenge, since she had to embody a myth in a gray Spain of the sixties. Critics praised her ability to capture the melancholy of a star in decline. **She shot the entire series in black and white** and blended into Madrid's social life as if she were just another neighbor in the Salamanca district.

In 2023 she joined the cast of the second season of The Gilded Age to play a British aristocrat. She traded jeans and rock band T-shirts for corsets and period wigs. That same year she worked on the series Younger, where she had a recurring role for seven seasons.

In 2024 she appeared in the Netflix series Kaos as Medusa. She still chooses projects that let her travel and keep her residence in Europe. **She sold her Brooklyn property** to settle permanently in a 15th-century villa on the outskirts of Florence.

She runs her own extra virgin olive oil brand and personally oversees the harvest every autumn.