Academy Award winner Mira Katherine Sorvino is the daughter of Lorraine Davis, an actress turned drama therapist, and veteran character actor Paul Sorvino. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1989. Her prize-winning thesis on racial conflict in China was written and researched during a year spent in Beijing, which helped her fluency in Mandarin Chinese.
Sorvino showed interest in acting from an early age. In the early ‘90s, she landed roles on television and in films such as Amongst Friends (1993), which she associate-produced, Barcelona (1994) and Quiz Show (1994).
Woody Allen cast her as Linda, the ditzy porn star and prostitute who wants more out of life, in Mighty Aphrodite (1995). She doesn’t appear in the movie until 30 minutes, but her performance over the other 65 minutes of the lighthearted comedy earned Sorvino the Academy Award for best supporting actress.
She has played a wide range of roles since then, including Marilyn Monroe in Norma Jean & Marilyn (1996), Guillermo del Toro’s Mimic (1997) and The Replacement Killers (1998). But the role that cemented her in popular culture was California beach girl Romy White in Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion (1997), opposite Friends star Lisa Kudrow.
Sorvino, who is married with four children, continues to act in films and on TV, but issues that are near and dear to her heart have merged with some of those roles, including last year’s box-office smash Sounds of Freedom, which deals with child sex trafficking. Sorvino is an in-demand speaker on issues such as sexual harassment and human trafficking. She has been a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador since 2009 and represented the U.N.’s Office on Drugs and Crime at the Vatican’s second Conference on Modern Slavery. The U.N. awarded her its Global Advocate of the Year in 2010.
She is also part of the #MeToo and #Time’sUp movements, serving as an ambassador for Amnesty International’s Stop Violence Against Women campaign from 2004-2008, while receiving its Artist of Conscience Award in 2006. Sorvino was among the first to come forward about studio executive Harvey Weinstein sexual misconduct in Ronan Farrow’s The New Yorker exposé (Weinstein’s Miramax released Mighty Aphrodite) and has been open about an unrelated date rape she experienced.
Mira Sorvino will appear with Mighty Aphrodite at 7 pm Friday, July 19 and Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion at 3:30 pm Saturday, July 20, both in the Plaza Theatre.
