Although her prize-winning role had links with Greek mythology - if only in name - it may be closer to the truth to say that the real affinity of Mighty Aphrodite star Mira Sorvino lies with the East.
As Chow Yun-fatt's co-star in his Hollywood debut, The Replacement Killers, much of Asia's attention will be on her when the film is released during the Lunar New Year. She has also just finished a South Korean production starring opposite Japanese-Chinese heart-throb Takeshi Kaneshiro.
Two of her good friends are Chinese: one is mainland actress Gong Li, whom Sorvino met and took a shine to when both were on the jury at this year's Cannes Film Festival. The other, one of her best childhood friends, is American-Chinese.
It was this childhood friend who created the bridge between American culture and the East. 'Her father is from [mainland] China and her mother from Taiwan, and during our school days they treated me as one of the family,' Sorvino said.
'I used to spend a lot of time at their place, playing with her and watching them do things like playing mahjong,' she recalled during a recent promotional visit to Taipei. 'No, I don't play [mahjong]: I only watched.' It is not surprising, then, that Sorvino gravitated towards studying East Asian languages and civilisations when she went to Harvard, took up Putonghua and took off to Beijing for eight months to do her thesis on anti-black bigotry there.
Had it not been for the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, Sorvino might very well have ended up teaching English there or working on a documentary.