Sorvino was born in Englewood, New Jersey in 1967 and raised in Tenafly, New Jersey to Lorraine Davis (a drama therapist for Alzheimer's patients) and veteran Italian American actor Paul Sorvino; she has two siblings, Michael, and Amanda, a playwright. She was raised in New Jersey and dedicated most of her childhood to academic studies, rather than preparing for an acting career, as her father did not want his three children to become actors at a young age. However, Sorvino wrote and acted in backyard plays with childhood friend Hope Davis, appeared in theater productions while in high school, and later 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, Sorvino was also active in the theater and music community and was a founding member of the Harvard-Radcliffe Veritones, one of Harvard's premier co-ed a cappella groups.

After graduating from college, Sorvino spent three years in New York, trying to make a name for herself as an actress. She worked at several jobs, including as a production assistant in a film company. When the 1993 film Amongst Friends entered pre-production, she was hired as third assistant director, before being promoted to casting director and to assistant producer, and was finally offered the lead role in the movie. Reviews of this role, her first film performance, were positive, which opened her doors for her following parts.

The breakthrough role in Sorvino's early career was her portrayal of a squeaky-voiced, foul-mouthed prostitute in Woody Allen's 1995 film Mighty Aphrodite, for which she won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Since then, she has had co-leading and supporting roles, some of them becoming box-office hits, such as Romy and Michele's High School Reunion (opposite Lisa Kudrow) and At First Sight with Val Kilmer.

In recent years, Sorvino has appeared in lower budget and independent films, including The Grey Zone and WiseGirls, both in 2002. In 2005, she played an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in the gritty Lifetime network film Human Trafficking; she received a Golden Globe nomination for the role.

Sorvino dated director Quentin Tarantino for several years and was more recently in a relationship with actor Olivier Martinez.

Sorvino 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," Sorvino told People. They got engaged within a month after that encounter. On June 11, 2004, they married in a private civil ceremony at a Santa Barbara, California courthouse. They later had a hilltop ceremony in Capri, Italy. Their daughter, Mattea Angel, was born on November 4, 2004 and their son, Johnny Christopher King, was born on May 29, 2006.