Sorvino is 5'10" tall. She met actor Christopher Backus—fourteen years her junior—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. 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 and their son, Johnny Christopher King, was born on May 29, 2006. She has also dated director Quentin Tarantino and French actor Olivier Martinez.

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.

In October of 2006, she was successfully evicted from h