Sorvino is 5'10" tall. She met actor Christopher Backus at a friend's charades party in August 2003: "He walked into the kitchen looking for silverware. We saw each other and something made us want to talk to each other more," she told People.^[6] They were engaged within a month. On June 11, 2004, they married in a private civil ceremony at a Santa Barbara, California courthouse, then later had a hilltop ceremony in Capri, Italy. Their daughter, Mattea Angel, was born on November 3, 2004^[7] and their son, Johnny Christopher King, was born on May 29, 2006. She has also dated director Quentin Tarantino and French actor Olivier Martinez. ^[8]-

She is affiliated with Amnesty International, and has been among the many Hollywood celebrities calling for United Nations action in Darfur. She spent a year of study in Beijing while attending Harvard. She is fluent in Mandarin Chinese, and also speaks French.^[9]

Her father did not want his children to become actors; at a young age, however, Sorvino wrote and acted in backyard plays with her childhood friend Hope Davis, in theater productions at Dwight-Englewood High School, and at Harvard University, where she graduated magna cum laude in East Asian Studies. Her thesis was on anti-African sentiment in China. While at Harvard, she helped found the Harvard-Radcliffe Veritones, one of Harvard's premier co-ed a cappella groups. Her solo piece was Yaz/Yazoo's "Only You".