Paul Wontorek and Mira Sorvino
(Photo by Sergio Villarini for Broadway.com)
Mira Sorvino has an Oscar on her shelf for Mighty Aphrodite and a cult following thanks to Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion. She’s starred in thrillers like Mimic and transformed into Marilyn Monroe in Norma Jean & Marilyn. But she’s always regretted one lifelong dream missing from her résumé: Broadway. On September 15, that dream turns into reality as she steps onto the Ambassador Theatre stage as Roxie Hart in Chicago.
If anyone was destined for Broadway, it was Sorvino. Her father, Paul Sorvino, was a towering presence on stage and screen, a Tony nominee for That Championship Season, a veteran of Broadway and opera, and later beloved for films like Goodfellas and TV’s Law & Order. She grew up in the thick of it, tagging along to Sardi’s where her dad’s caricature still hangs. “He always felt like a king there, holding court in those red booths,” she says, getting emotional as she shares that his wake was also held there.
Her dad was also her first acting coach. When little Mira had to kiss a boy in H.M.S. Pinafore, she panicked. Paul had the perfect fix: “Imagine he’s Elvis.” She did, and suddenly the cheek kiss was magic. “That was the moment I caught the bug,” she says. From backyard plays with her neighbor (future actress Hope Davis) to playing Aldonza in Man of La Mancha at Harvard, Sorvino spent her childhood soaking up the stage.
And then came Hollywood. Sorvino scooped up an Academy Award for Mighty Aphrodite, danced into cult glory with Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion (a sequel is in the works), and became a bona fide movie star. But her career was knocked off course. Sorvino has said that rejecting producer Harvey Weinstein’s advances in the 1990s may have cost her major studio roles, and when the allegations came to light in 2017, she was among the first actresses to go on the record against him. “It was a 20-year gap,” she says simply.
She filled that gap with a meaningful life: marrying actor Christopher Backus, raising four kids, and devoting herself to activism as a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador fighting human trafficking. “My life has had some kind of divine plan,” she says.
Her path to Roxie started on an unlikely stage: Dancing With the Stars. When she was eliminated earlier than expected in 2023, she was crushed. “I was so depressed because I loved it,” she says. “Then I thought: why don’t I just take jazz classes and become a competent dancer so I could eventually do Broadway?”
Two years later, Sorvino had been quietly training in Los Angeles studios. When she met with the Chicago team, all that work paid off. After working with dance captain Greg Butler and meeting producer Barry Weissler, she soon had an offer on the table.
She even managed to keep it a secret from her daughter, a dancer herself, until she surprised her one night with tickets to a Broadway show. “She said, ‘What Broadway show and why?’ And I told her, ‘We’re going to see Chicago because I’m going to do Chicago!’” That’s what you call a reveal.
Her kids are all cheering her on, as is her husband, Christopher. But she can’t help thinking of her dad. Paul Sorvino had his own late-career triumph when, at 65, he finally got the chance to sing with New York City Opera in the leading role of The Most Happy Fella. “We thought, ‘There’s no expiration date on dreams. Look at Dad,’” she says.
Now Mira has her own version of that story, stepping into Roxie Hart’s spotlight after decades of waiting. “Roxie getting an act is sort of like me getting to be on Broadway,” she says with a grin. “I didn’t kill anybody for it… but the Broadway debut? That feels long overdue. And now it’s finally happening.”
Watch the interview below.
