While this director is the daughter of a film family, she has sought to earn her own way: her father is producer Raphael Silver; her mother director Joan Micklin Silver. Marisa Silver got her start while attending Harvard, where she directed the short "Dexter T" (1977) and edited the documentary "Light Coming Through: A Portrait of Maud Morgan". In 1982, she co-directed (with Peter Davis) the Emmy-nominated PBS "Middletown" segment "A Community of Praise", which profiled a Christian Fundamentalist group. Thereafter, Silver's TV experience was limited to directing a 1992 episode of "L.A. Law" (NBC) and a USA Network telefilm "Indecency" (also 1992).

Her big-screen debut came with the Sundance-sponsored film "Old Enough" (1984), co-produced with her sister, Dina. Silver both wrote and directed this small, charming film about the friendship between a rich girl and a poor girl in New York. Her second film, "Permanent Record" (1988), featured a young Keanu Reeves in a drama about teen suicide. She stayed with the people-oriented genre with "Vital Signs" (199), a drama about a group of medical students. Silver's first co-directing project (with Ken Kwapis) was the high-concept "He Said, She Said" (1991), a battle of the sexes comedy shown alternately from the view of the man (Kevin Bacon) and the woman (Elizabeth Perkins).