| Regardless
of what plum assignments her acting future holds, Mira
Sorvino will likely never deliver a more moving (or sincere)
performance than the one she gave on Oscar night, 1996.
Looking like European royalty, Sorvino graciously accepted
her Best Supporting Actress statuette with a heart-felt
dedication to her actor father. "When you give me this
award, you honor my father, Paul Sorvino, who has taught
me everything there is to know about acting," she declared.
"I love you very much, Dad." At that point, Papa Sorvino
broke into tears. It was great TV.
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As
her poised and articulate acceptance speech demonstrated,
Mira Sorvino is a far different woman from the air-headed
hooker she played to the Oscar-winning hilt in Woody Allen's
Mighty Aphrodite. In fact, Sorvino almost wasn't
allowed to audition for Allen because the film's casting
agents deemed her too refined to play a tacky call girl.
Their concerns were not unfounded, as nothing on the actress's
résumé spoke to her ability to fulfill the demands of
the role. Raised in New Jersey, far from Hollywood's glittery
distractions, Sorvino spent much of her childhood with
her nose in a book. Her father, a character actor whose
many credits include roles in Goodfellas and Nixon,
had always discouraged Mira and her two siblings from
acting professionally because he wanted them to grow up
without the psychological strain of child stardom_the
so-called "Danny Bonaduce Syndrome." So Mira concentrated
on her studies and, after high school, she was accepted
at Harvard University, where she earned a degree in East
Asian Studies. During a year abroad, in Beijing, she learned
to speak fluent Mandarin.
Despite
her father's anxiety about his children following in his
professional footsteps, Mira had been in student productions
throughout high school and college. Now, as an adult,
she moved to New York and tried to act professionally.
She spent the next three years doing the struggling actress-waitress
thing and working as a production assistant for Robert
De Niro's Tribeca film company. In 1992, Sorvino landed
a job as third assistant director on her director friend
Rob Weiss's independent film Amongst Friends. During
the course of production, Sorvino was promoted first to
casting director, then to associate producer, and, finally,
to the film's female lead. Her performance as an ex-con's
devoted girlfriend marked her auspicious feature-film
debut and generated positive notices during its screenings
on the film-festival circuit.
Directors
Whit Stillman and Robert Redford were among the industry
figures whose attentions were piqued by the budding actress's
screen presence. Stillman tapped Sorvino's facility with
languages by casting her as a translator in Barcelona
(1994); Redford directed her in her first studio film,
Quiz Show (1994), in which she played Rob Morrow's
brainy, long-suffering wife. Next up, Sorvino again relied
on her proficiency with accents (and dye jobs) in her
star-making turn as Linda, the kindhearted prostitute
and biological mother of Woody Allen's adopted son in
Mighty Aphrodite. She succeeded in stealing the
spotlight from her co-stars, Allen, Helena Bonham Carter,
and F. Murray Abraham.
In
1996, Sorvino gave stand-out performances as Matt Dillon's
love interest in Beautiful Girls, and as the blonde
Marilyn to Ashley Judd's brunette Norma Jean in HBO's
Norma Jean and Marilyn. The following year delivered
up roles in the bubble-brained comedy Romy and
Michele's High School Reunion, with Janeane Garofalo
and Lisa Kudrow, and the horror flick Mimic. Her
star on a steady ascent, Sorvino banked $2 million to
star opposite Asian action star Chow Yun Fat in the 1998
thriller The Replacement Killers. 1999 dawned with
a starring role opposite Val Kilmer in the romantic drama
At First Sight, and later in the year, she rounded
out the ensemble cast of Spike Lee's Summer of Sam
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