- April 8, 2025
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For Ormond Beach resident Marie McKenzie-Cortez, starring in movies was not about the glitz and the glamour.
It was true, hard work — a job.
Being part of the 1994 movie, "Guarding Tess," featuring Shirley MacLaine and Nicolas Cage, was no exception. McKenzie-Cortez played a nurse in the movie.
"I had to drive from Washington D.C. to Baltimore," 92-year-old McKenzie-Cortez recalled. "When I got to Baltimore, we were in a snowstorm. So the following day, everything was snowed in. I was there a week to do this little bitty part in 'Guarding Tess.'"
And yet, 31 years later, people continue to enjoy the movie, she said. Last month, the movie was shown to her fellow Paradise Pointe Assisted Living residents.
"They cut out a little bit," McKenzie-Cortez said of the movie. "I did have lines, but they cut them out, and so it's a very short, bitty piece, but I'm still in it. I still get residuals."
McKenzie-Cortez worked as a day player for movies. But before all that, modeling is what kickstarted the Brooklyn, New York native's career.
She was 18 when she started modeling. If you were a model in the 1950s, McKenzie-Cortez recalled, "you were somebody very special."
"My mother, of course, was focused on me getting an education," McKenzie-Cortez said. "There was no money for me to go to college — Forget that. So I had to go to work."
She worked doing garment shows for wholesale houses on 7th Avenue in New York City for some time, and later went to work with Central Casting. That brought her into the film industry.
And in the middle of all that, she met her late husband James in 1956. James was a cadet at West Point, and they married after he graduated in 1957. The couple traveled to Germany for his first tour of duty in the army, and in the three years they were there, they had two sons, Michael and Stephen.
They were married for 50 years. James, who suffered from Parkinson's, died in 2015, 16 years after the couple moved to Ormond Beach.
"He was a wonderful, wonderful man," McKenzie-Cortez said. "I'm grateful for the fact that I had him in my life."
She returned to modeling and acting — including working at the Shakespeare Theater in DC for one year — once she came back to the U.S.
A member of the Screen Actors Guild, McKenzie-Cortez has six credits on her IMDB page, including "Guarding Tess," "Ever After: A Cinderella Story" and the 1994 "The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes" TV mini series.
McKenzie-Cortez has lived at Paradise Pointe for about three months, having had a stroke last year. Her life has changed since, and she's had some memory loss.
Still, she has her eyes set on what she'll do next in this new phase of life.
"A lot of [my memory] has come back," McKenzie-Cortez said. "I'm grateful for that, but at the same time, I still have a life that I want to live."
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