Leah Remini

Leah Remini and fellow actor Angelo Pagán met at a Cuban restaurant sometime in 1996. After dating for nearly seven years, the couple married on July 19, 2003. Remini gave birth to her daughter, Sofia Bella, on June 16, 2004, a day after her own 34th birthday. She is also the stepmother of Pagán’s three children from previous relationships.

Born on June 15, 1970, in Brooklyn, New York, Leah Remini is one of the two daughters of George Remini and Vicki Marshal. Her mother worked as a schoolteacher while her father was the owner of an asbestos removal company. Vicki has Austrian Jewish ancestry and George is of Sicilian descent.

The couple raised their children in the Roman Catholic tradition. Leah has an older sister named Nicole and a brother named Michael. She also had four half-sisters, Christine, Stephanie (died in 2013), Elizabeth, and Shannon.

Her parents divorced in 1977 and her mother subsequently married Dennis Farrara, a man who was already a member of the Church of Scientology. He is the one who converted Vicki and her children to Scientology.

Leah Remini was still a teenager when she was cast in her first acting role, in a 1988 episode of ABC’s sitcom ‘Head of the Class’. A year later, she played the recurring role of Charlie Briscoe in another ABC sitcom ‘Who’s the Boss’ and later reprised the role in the spin-off series ‘Living Dolls’, in which she starred alongside Halle Berry. However, the show was cancelled after airing 12 episodes.

In 1991, she was part of the cast of yet another short-lived sitcom that aired on ABC, ‘The Man in the Family’ and played Stacey Carosi, one of the love interests of Zack Morris (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) in the season three of NBC’s sitcom ‘Saved by the Bell’. She appeared in two episodes of another popular NBC sitcom, ‘Cheers’, between 1991 and 1993.

Remini did her first television film, ‘Getting Up and Going Home’, in 1992. In the following year, she appeared in three episodes of CBS’ sitcom ‘Evening Shade’. In 1994, she was cast as the voice of Sagan Cruz in the French-American animated series ‘Phantom 2040’.

She also guest-starred in the first season episode, ‘The One with the Birth’, of ‘Friends’. In 1995, she appeared as Dominique Constellano, a cynical employee of a record label, in the short-lived The WB sitcom ‘First Time Out’.

She made her cinematic debut in the 1997 film ‘Critics and Other Freaks’. She also landed her first starring role in a TV show that year. NBC’s sitcom ‘Fired Up’ was about two women, a promotions executive and her assistant, who get fired from their jobs and decide to set up their own business. Remini portrayed the assistant. The show was cancelled after two seasons.

Leah Remini garnered much praise for her performance as Carrie Heffernan and her chemistry with Kevin James in the series ‘The King of Queens.’ Created by Michael J. Weithorn and David Litt, the show was a spin-off of Ray Romano’s ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’. While the show received mixed reviews from the critics, it developed a loyal following. It ran for nine seasons before airing its final episode on May 14, 2007. It was the last live-action sitcom that debuted in the 1990s to conclude its run.