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Quick Facts
- NAME: Mira Sorvino
- OCCUPATION: Women's Rights Activist, Film Actress, Television Actress, Producer
- BIRTH DATE: September 28, 1968 (Age: 44)
- EDUCATION: Harvard University
- PLACE OF BIRTH: Tenafly, New Jersey
- ZODIAC SIGN: Libra
Best Known For
Mira Sorvino is an Academy Award-winning actress who starred in Woody Allen's Mighty Aphrodite.
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Play NowMira Sorvino. (2013). The Biography Channel website. Retrieved 08:42, May 19, 2013, from http://www.biography.com/people/mira-sorvino-9542375.
Mira Sorvino. [Internet]. 2013. The Biography Channel website. Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/mira-sorvino-9542375 [Accessed 19 May 2013].
"Mira Sorvino." 2013. The Biography Channel website. May 19 2013, 08:42 http://www.biography.com/people/mira-sorvino-9542375.
"Mira Sorvino," The Biography Channel website, 2013, http://www.biography.com/people/mira-sorvino-9542375 [accessed May 19, 2013].
"Mira Sorvino," The Biography Channel website, http://www.biography.com/people/mira-sorvino-9542375 (accessed May 19, 2013).
Mira Sorvino [Internet]. The Biography Channel website; 2013 [cited 2013 May 19] Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/mira-sorvino-9542375.
Mira Sorvino, http://www.biography.com/people/mira-sorvino-9542375 (last visited May 19, 2013).
Mira Sorvino. The Biography Channel website. 2013. Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/mira-sorvino-9542375. Accessed May 19, 2013.
Synopsis
Mira Sorvino was born on September 28, 1968, in Tenafly, New Jersey. Daughter of actor Paul Sorvino, Mira's breakthrough film was Woody Allen's Mighty Aphrodite, which earned her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Sorvino supports human rights causes and has worked with Amnesty International. She's married to actor Christopher Backus and they have three children.
Early Life
Actress, producer and activist Mira Sorvino was born on September 28, 1968, in Tenafly, New Jersey. During her three decades as a performer, actress Mira Sorvino has played an impressive mix of roles, from a bubbly prostitute to a scientist, from a master forger to Marilyn Monroe. She may have inherited some of her acting ability from her father, Paul Sorvino, a veteran performer best known for his many seasons on the popular television crime drama, Law & Order.
Sorvino was also strongly influenced by her mother to pursue social causes. "My mom marched on Washington with Martin Luther King. That my mom, a white middle-class lady, was moved enough to get involved in the civil rights movement made an enormous impression," she later explained to People magazine.
A bright student, she excelled at school. While a student at Harvard University, Sorvino wrote her thesis on racial conflict in China. She had spent a year in China as part of a study abroad program and became fluent in Mandarin.
After earning a degree in East Asian studies, Sorvino directed a documentary on anti-Semitism in Russia. She also worked a number of jobs, including serving as a production assistant and a script reader for Robert De Niro. Before long, she decided to pursue acting as a career. Sorvino had done some acting in school, but her father had discouraged her from taking up his profession. "I think he just didn't want rejection as the mainstay of his children's diet," she told Redbook magazine.
Aspiring Actress
For several years, Sorvino struggled to make it as a performer. She had a role in the short-lived syndicated teen serial Swans Crossing in 1992. When that ended, Sorvino landed a role on the soap opera Guiding Light, but she turned down a three-year contract there in the hope that better opportunities laid ahead. She made her film debut in 1993's Amongst Friends, an independent drama. The following year she played Rob Morrow's intellectual wife in Quiz Show (1994), directed by Robert Redford and starring Ralph Fiennes.
Sorvino's breakthrough role was Linda Ash, the squeaky-voiced, bleached blonde prostitute with a heart of gold in Woody Allen's Mighty Aphrodite (1995). She auditioned for the part twice. The first time she was rejected because she was not "sexual" enough. Undeterred, Sorvino met again with Allen while the two were both in London. She came to the meeting dressed provocatively and using a distinctive voice. Her efforts paid off -- Allen gave her the role. Sorvino was anxious during the filming. "I was absolutely neurotic doing Mighty Aphrodite.
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