24 years ago, Mira Sorvino won a Golden Globe and an Oscar for Mighty Aphrodite. Her career skyrocketed in the 1990s but came to a sudden halt when she accused a now-jailed studio boss of sexual misconduct. Sorvino, the daughter of actor Paul Sorvino, is fluent in Mandarin and spent the better part of a decade raising a family, then found her way back to filmmaking. Now at 52, she has entered the Ryan Murphy universe as Jeanne Crandall in Hollywood. Here she talks about life and career and does not mince words when it comes to Harvey Weinstein.

How did you get involved with Hollywood?

I was told that there was a kind of a Lana Turner part in Hollywood by Ryan Murphy and would I be interested, and I said yes! There wasn’t a process of auditions and meetings and me even reading the script. Just a question and an answer and it happened. It was amazing.

Ryan Murphy has a knack for finding interesting actors for his projects. Did he come directly to you?

Ryan and I met two and a half years ago at a party – and my husband and I joked that of all the Hollywood parties we’ve been to and that are supposed to be for networking blablabla, we’ve never gotten a job or anything close to a job from going to a party. So, when I met Ryan, I was very surprised that he knew my whole filmography, and then afterward he told my agent ‘I’m gonna find something for us to work on together’. And then I didn’t hear anything for years and I was like, I love him, I hope that happens but I’m not holding my breath. And then it did happen! The only time in my life that there was this chance meeting and it turned into a collaboration, which I hope won’t be the last because I simply adore working with him and his entire universe. Everyone working with him is so happy to be there.

What resonated with you in terms of your character, Jeanne Crandall?

She is like me and then she is not like me. It wasn’t until episode four that I discovered that she’s been having an affair with the studio head for ten years. And that is where we supremely differ, because in my story, as everyone knows, I turned down Harvey Weinstein several times, and it cost me dearly. He punished me with a blacklisting. Jeanne is in a love relationship with this man, but it is a complete imbalance of power, she is begging for scraps.

You won an Oscar, made a few more films and then got blacklisted by Weinstein, but you didn’t even know he had blacklisted you, right?

No, I did not. I knew he wasn’t working with me anymore. I went from four Miramax films in a row to never being cast in one again. But I had no idea that the poison was spilling beyond that.

Peter Jackson wanted you for Lord of the Rings?

With Lord of the Rings, when it moved from Miramax to New Line, it was still poisoned. And other directors. People talk, and I had no idea how far it reached but it must have reached far because I didn’t do a studio movie for over a decade. And the first one was Stuber last year. I still worked in TV and independent film. It was a long blackballing. And I am not alone. There are so many and not even just women, men also who were on the odds with him. There is one, in particular, a very famous man, much more powerful than me, who accused him and only when Ronan Farrow and the amazing journalists form the NYT exposed him and it was the start of the MeToo movement, was his phone ringing off the hook and he was castable again. It is interesting how much influence Harvey had and how much damage he did to so many lives.

How did you feel when he got convicted for what is essentially life?

I was crying tears of joy, not because I gain happiness from someone else’s suffering, but the fact that the justice system worked on behalf of all the women that he raped and hurt and assaulted and harassed and destroyed their peace of mind and their ability to practice their art and their craft and feel secure and safe and happy. That a man who had abused his power for so long was actually brought to his knees felt like an enormous victory, not only for me but for survivors of sexual assault and violence across the world. It was a milestone because he is also the first white powerful man in our business who was brought to justice. Epstein died in jail. Bill Cosby was convicted but now they are granting him an appeal which is horrible. But to see Harvey fall signaled a new era where justice and accountability win. The era of impunity was over and that was a victory for all of us.

Did you have doubts about him getting convicted?

I couldn’t believe it. I really was fearful that he was going to walk and that the tactics of his very nasty lawyer were going to be sufficient to persuade a jury not beyond a reasonable doubt. I was overcome with emotion.

You have always been an activist. How do you feel about what is happening now with Black Lives Matter?

What happened as a result of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and so many others was long overdue. I was raised on the virtues of the civil rights movement, my parents were ardent supporters of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The promise of the civil rights movement has not been fully realized. The fires of hate have been fanned by our current administration and it’s really disgusting. The system needs to be overhauled so that these things stop happening.

When did you become an activist?

In 2004 when I got involved with Amnesty International and Women’s Rights, and it really opened my eyes to how massive the scale was in terms of violence against women across the globe and every culture. We’re gonna see more and more revelations. The MeToo movement was just the tip of the iceberg.

You have seven projects in post-production and two others completed, which ones are you most excited about?

As you know, I am also a United Nations ambassador on human trafficking. I did a film called Sound of Freedom based on the true story of Tim Ballard, a former CIA, DHA, and ICE operative who gave it all up because he realized that working for the government, he could discover abuses but not stop them. So, he started an organization called Operation Underground Railroad – OUR – and he has personally saved over 1,000 children from sex trafficking. Jim Caviezel plays him, and I play his wife.

Who encouraged you to be so courageous in your choices of different genres throughout your career?

My Dad always said if your soul cries out to do something, you have to do it. Like Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion. That wasn’t a project that my agents were particularly keen on doing because I had just been nominated for the Oscar, I hadn’t won yet, but they felt it wasn’t dignified. But I saw so much hilarity and heart and related to it. It has become the most enduring of all my roles, I have never regretted doing it and people still ask me about it.

When did you know you wanted to be an actress?

I knew I loved it from the time I was eight when I was in a high school play. But I also had other interests, I sort of stopped at the As, I wanted to be either an actor, an astronaut or an anthropologist. But after I had lived in China, been a free-lance photographer and a waitress, taught Chinese in New York and English in China, read scripts for Robert De Niro’s company. But it came to me one day that acting is my channel, that it needs to be expressed. I felt the call, went to my Dad and he said, “Well, then, I give you my blessing”. Like the Pope. I dropped everything else and once I made it my singular focus within two months I started working.