On “Seinfeld,” George has coffee with the movie star Marisa Tomei. The storyline appears in “The Cadillac,” a two-part Season 7 episode that originally aired in 1996.
George becomes fascinated when Katy, a friend of Elaine’s, says she knows Tomei and suggests that the Oscar-winning actress might like him. George is engaged to Susan Ross, so Elaine argues that meeting Tomei for coffee would count as cheating. George insists that coffee is harmless, revealing the elaborate moral loopholes he regularly invents to justify his behavior.
Tomei plays a fictionalized version of herself, not a character from one of her films. She was already widely known for winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for “My Cousin Vinny” in 1993, which the episode references as part of her celebrity appeal. After Susan’s death, George contacts Tomei and tells her that he and Susan are no longer together, leading to their eventual meeting.
A common mix-up is remembering the episode as involving a different famous actress or as a hypothetical date. Tomei is the canonical answer: George’s obsession with her is a major running thread in the seventh-season engagement storyline, and the coffee meeting actually occurs on screen.