Memo to studios: Mira Sorvino is ready to do a big fat Hollywood comedy. 
Anyone who has forgotten how funny Sorvino can be need only see "The Triumph 
of Love," an 18th century screwball sex farce that opened Wednesday in which 
she plays a princess bent on seducing a pompous philosopher (Ben Kingsley) 
and his spinster sister (Fiona Shaw) in order to restore her true love (Jay 
Rodan) to his rightful place on the throne.

Sorvino's comedic gifts have not been demonstrated much in recent years. Most 
of the 17 films she's made since 1997's "Romy and Michele's High School 
Reunion," released a year after she took home the supporting actress Oscar 
for her role as the helium-voiced hooker in "Mighty Aphrodite," have featured 
the New Jersey-bred actress in serious roles.

"Triumph" marks a highly theatrical return to comedic form, and Sorvino says 
she's ready for more. "I can't predict what's going to come across my desk, 
but I'd love to do a big comedy." Given its limited release by Paramount 
Classics, "Triumph" might not qualify as a "big" movie, but Sorvino's role is 
super-sized. She drives virtually every scene as the devious, 
gender-switching Princess. "When I first read the script, I thought, 'Oh God, 
I can't play this woman, I can't stand her, she's such a monster,'" says 
Sorvino, sitting down for a bowl of seafood soup at a cafe in Malibu, the 
community where she's lived for the past few months. "She's this master 
manipulator who divines each character's true desire, figures out what they 
really want to hear and then tells it to them."

The appeal of playing Princess/Phocion was elemental, she says. "It's what 
you'd imagine as a little girl, you know: I got to be a princess, I got to be 
a boy, and I got to do all these naughty things and it was thrilling." Among 
the thrills: going toe to toe with Kingsley's Hemocrates, a repressed 
academic who tries to fend off the Princess' charms. Kingsley likened his 
scenes with Sorvino to a tennis match at Wimbledon. "The crowd holds their 
breath when you get two really good tennis players against each other, but at 
the same time, playing with each other in the same game. We can only hit the 
ball back as well as it comes at us."

Sorvino was living in Paris two years ago with her boyfriend, actor Olivier 
Martinez, when she first talked to "Triumph" writer-director Clare Peploe 
about the role. Peploe recalls Sorvino's impromptu audition. "We went to my 
apartment, which Roberto Benigni had lent me, and Mira just read me a bit of 
Phocion seducing Leontine in this flawless British accent, and I felt like 
Leontine. I was completely seduced."

Once Sorvino clinched the deal after meeting "Triumph" producer Bernardo 
Bertolucci, the Harvard-educated actress did extensive homework. She read 
Pierre Marivaux's original 1732 play, in French. She studied 18th century 
portraits at the Louvre so she could mimic the artificial poses as a "tip of 
the hat" to the era's preening sensibility. She also borrowed some moves from 
contemporary figures. "I pulled from a lot of crazy pop culture icons to play 
the guy. I watched the Albert Finney movie 'Tom Jones,' and Capt. Kirk is in 
there a little bit to get that larger-than-life, macho, bravura thing.

"It's like 'Twelfth Night,' or any of those plays where you have women 
masquerading as men. You want the audience to be laughing: 'Well, she doesn't 
get it quite right, because she's trying a little bit too hard.'"

Before filming "Triumph," Sorvino made "The Grey Zone," a fact-based 
Holocaust drama slated for an October release. She plays a concentration camp 
captive tortured for smuggling gun powder to a group of Jewish prisoners 
planning to blow up the crematoriums at Auschwitz.

When casting "The Grey Zone," writer-director Tim Blake Nelson found 
Sorvino's performance as a downtrodden Bronx housewife in Spike Lee's 1999 
urban drama "Summer of Sam" particularly intriguing. But would she buy into 
his vision of a deliberately flat, documentary-like film? And would she be 
easy to work with?

"I encountered none of that difficult attitude others had told me about," 
Nelson says.

Sorvino has confronted those "difficult" rumors more than once. "When I won 
the Oscar, my life became a total whirlwind and I got rocketed into doing one 
film after another very quickly, and no one really tells you how to do it, 
what the rules are, and how to be the consummate professional.

"You sort of have to learn as you go. Now I know what needs to happen on a 
movie set and how the actor has to be a team player, which I don't think I 
really understood before."

Nelson says Sorvino delivered precisely the muted performance the picture 
required, without "a moment of movie-star antics.... Hers is a lean, entirely 
unsentimental performance and it takes a lot of guts for an actor to resist 
the impulse to embellish."

In the wake of "Aphrodite" and "Romy and Michele," Sorvino could have 
capitalized on her platinum persona by picking more projects in the same 
vein. That was not an option, she says."I had done 'Mighty Aphrodite' and 
[the TV movie] 'Norma Jean & Marilyn,' and then I did 'Romy and Michele' and 
that's sort of three dumb blonds in a row--well, Marilyn Monroe was not a 
dumb blond but that's how she was perceived--so after that, I did get a lot 
of offers for dumb blonds, but I wouldn't do them. As Robert Redford said to 
me when I did 'Quiz Show'"--Sorvino slips into a mock stentorian voice--"he 
said, 'Beware the sex roles, Mira; they come to a dead end at 35.' And I 
think that was good advice."

While dating Quentin Tarantino, a fan of horror and action genres, Sorvino 
followed "Romy and Michele" with "Mimic," in which she played a scientist 
fighting mutated insects. The sci-fi thriller was praised for Mexican 
director Guillermo del Toro's stylish visuals but failed to connect at the 
box office. Sorvino has no regrets."Guillermo is really brilliant and funny 
so I just said, 'I'm going to try this.'"

Next came "The Replacement Killers," a martial arts feature directed by 
Antoine Fuqua ("Training Day"). The appeal for Sorvino? "Rather than being a 
sad character, I wanted to run around and kick and jump and do stunts. It was 
fun. That was where I was then. I'm not really there anymore."

The decision to make "Free Money" "had nothing to do with any kind of 
judgment call, any kind of career planning," Sorvino says. "It was like, 
'Marlon Brando? Sign me up.'"

Reflecting on her hits and misses, Sorvino, the daughter of actor Paul 
Sorvino, says, "I think in the past maybe some of my choices were more like 
'OK, well this seems fun, let's do it.' But you have to remember, I was just 
starting out and I was more innocent about the whole thing."

Sorvino moved to Los Angeles last year from New York in part because she 
simply could not find a two-bedroom Manhattan apartment with southern 
exposure at a reasonable price. While visiting Los Angeles with her mother, 
Sorvino spotted a house in Malibu and decided on the spur of the moment to 
move west. "To think that I was dying for a tiny square foot where I could 
put a tree, and now I have land and trees and birds and lizards."

There were also show-biz considerations. "In moving here," she says, "I would 
be committing myself 100% to my career, which I've never really done before."

Sorvino continues to alternate between studio projects, like Warner Bros.' 
Civil War drama "Gods and Generals," opening in September, and smaller films, 
including "Between Strangers," an ensemble drama co-starring Sophia Loren, 
and Sundance entry "Wisegirls," both slated for release later this year.

"I would enjoy doing a bigger movie right now because I think, just in terms 
of the sequence of things, that would be nice," she says. "But if somebody 
sent me some brilliant script about the fascinating women living in some 
fantastic age, I'd have to think twice."

In short, Sorvino, the master seductress in "Triumph of Love," is herself 
subject to the seductions of a great script, regardless of commercial 
potential. "It's just a question of what I fall in love with."

"You have to use some kind of instinct meter about it," she adds. "I think 
I'm getting closer to my instincts now. I don't think there needs to be a 
plan. I think there needs to be love. I think you need to love what you're 
doing and then the rest is anybody's guess."