Sofía Vergara
Sofía Margarita Vergara Vergara (Spanish: [soˈfi.a βeɾˈɣaɾa]; born July 10, 1972)[1][2] is a Colombian and American actress and television personality. She is known for her role as Gloria Delgado-Pritchett in the ABC sitcom Modern Family (2009–2020) and drug lord Griselda Blanco in the miniseries Griselda (2024). For the former, she was nominated for four Golden Globe Awards and four Primetime Emmy Awards. The role established her as one of the highest-paid actresses in America.[3][4][5]
In this Spanish name, the first or paternal surname is Vergara and the second or maternal family name is Vergara.
Sofía Vergara
- Colombian
- American
- Actress
- television personality
1995–present
-
Joe Gonzalez(m. 1991; div. 1993)
1
Sandra Vergara (cousin, adopted sister)
Vergara rose to prominence while co-hosting two television shows for Spanish-language television network Univision in the late 1990s. Her first notable acting job in English was in the film Chasing Papi (2003). She subsequently appeared in Four Brothers (2005) and Tyler Perry's comedies Meet the Browns (2008) and Madea Goes to Jail (2009), receiving an ALMA Award nomination for the latter. She also acted in New Year's Eve (2011), The Three Stooges (2012), Machete Kills (2013), Fading Gigolo (2013), Chef (2014), and Hot Pursuit (2015). Vergara has also had voice-over roles in the animated films Happy Feet Two (2011), Escape from Planet Earth (2013), and The Emoji Movie (2017).
Since 2020, Vergara has been a judge on the television talent show America's Got Talent.[6] She is also known as a businesswoman, and brand ambassador. She designs her own fashion line for Kmart and signed with both Pepsi and CoverGirl in 2011. Vergara launched her first fragrance "Sofia by Sofia Vergara" in 2014 and has since released four more fragrances. She is one of the few Latinas in ad campaigns in the United States.[7]
Early life[edit]
Vergara was born to a Roman Catholic family[8] in Barranquilla.[9] Her mother, Margarita Vergara de Vergara, was a homemaker, and her father, Julio Enrique Vergara Robayo, was a cattle rancher for the meat industry.[10][11][12] She was nicknamed "Toti" by her five siblings and many cousins.[13]
Vergara initially studied dentistry for three years at National University of Colombia, but she left two semesters away from completing her degree to pursue opportunities in modeling and show business.[10][14] In 1998, her older brother Rafael was murdered in Colombia during an attempt to kidnap him.[15] Not wanting to be caught in the unrest that resulted in the murder, Vergara emigrated to the United States, settling in Miami, Florida.[9][10][13][16] Her cousin and adopted sister, Sandra, is also a television actress in the United States.[17][18]
Personal life[edit]
Vergara has naturally blonde hair. For movies and television, she is sometimes asked to colour her hair dark brown or black to make her look more stereotypically Hispanic.[59][60] Vergara was married at the age of 18 to her high-school sweetheart, Joe Gonzalez.[9] They have a son named Manolo, who was born in Colombia on September 16, 1991.[61] They divorced in 1993.[9] Vergara and her boyfriend Nick Loeb became engaged in 2012 after dating for two years. On May 23, 2014, Vergara announced that the engagement had been called off.[62] Vergara and True Blood star Joe Manganiello became engaged on Christmas Eve 2014 after dating for six months.[63] They married in Palm Beach, Florida, on November 21, 2015.[64][65] On July 17, 2023, Vergara and Manganiello announced to Page Six that they have separated and are planning to divorce after seven years of marriage.[66] The divorce was finalized in February 2024.[67]
Vergara was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2000 at the age of 28.[68][69][70] She had her thyroid removed, underwent radioiodine therapy, and made a full recovery.[71] She takes medication to prevent hypothyroidism.[72] On May 9, 2011, Vergara's younger brother Julio was deported from the United States to Colombia after being arrested in April that year; Julio also had a longtime drug addiction and previous brushes with the law.[73][74] Vergara told Parade magazine, "To see somebody dying over 10 years, little by little, that's the worst punishment. Now he's like another person."[75] During her December 2014 appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Vergara revealed that she had become a United States citizen after getting a perfect score on her citizenship test.[76][77]
From 2015 to 2017, Vergara was involved in a legal dispute regarding the future of two fertilized embryos produced by in vitro fertilization while she was still in a relationship with Loeb;[78] the embryos were kept in storage in cryopreservation in a medical clinic in California.[79] Following the couple's split in 2014, Loeb filed a lawsuit for custody of the embryos in a California court, but he later dropped that lawsuit when the court demanded that Loeb identify two women who had abortions after he had impregnated them.[80] In December 2016, a right-to-life lawsuit against Vergara was initiated in Louisiana with Vergara's embryos as plaintiffs. [81]
The embryos were named "Emma" and "Isabella" in the lawsuit, and their "trustee" was listed as James Charbonnet, a New Orleans resident of no relation to Vergara.[82] The intent of the suit was to give the embryos a chance to further develop using a surrogate carrier, hence to be born, and to benefit from an inheritance trust that had been created for them and is administered by Charbonnet.[79] Loeb had written "Keeping them frozen forever is tantamount to killing them," in a 2015 op-ed in The New York Times.[83] The suit also tried to terminate parental rights of Vergara because by keeping them in cryopreservation in a medical clinic she allegedly abandoned and neglected the embryos. The legal case was novel and took advantage of Louisiana's embryo laws;[79] the state passed a law in 1986 that declares embryos to be "juridical persons", giving embryos the right to sue or be sued.[84] In August 2017, a Louisiana judge dismissed the case on the grounds that the court had no jurisdiction over the embryos, which were conceived in California.[85][86]