This producer and performer has worked most frequently with her live-in partner, director/writer John Sayles, but she and her producing partners have collaborated on other projects as well. Renzi had worked as a salad chef and a casting assistant in New York when she met Sayles in 1974; the two first worked together on the director's "The Return of the Secaucus Seven" (1980). Renzi not only played one of the roles, but was also unit manager and assistant editor on the film.

Renzi worked her way up to unit manager and co-producer (with Jeffrey Nelson) on Sayles' 1982 gay-themed drama "Lianna",