Leah Remini mini-bio: Leah Remini (born June 15, 1970 in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York) is an Italian-American actress. She is best known for her role as Carrie Heffernan on the CBS sitcom King of Queens.
Leah Remini was born in Bensonhurst (Brooklyn), New York, to George Remini, owner of an asbestos company. Her father is not to be confused with George Remini, the Caporegime of the Gambino Crime Family. Her mother Vicki Marshall, a former high school principal and current LA restaurant owner, is Jewish and originally from Austria. Her parents were divorced in 1977.
Remini has an older sister, Nicole Remini (born 1969) who was her assistant on The King of Queens. She also has four half-sisters: Christina (born 1969), Elizabeth (born 1976), Stephanie (born 1977), and Shannon (born 1984). Shannon has acted on Leah's show as a character named Desiree.
Remini moved to Los Angeles at the age of 13. She tried fitting into her new neighborhood by imitating the look and style of the local Mexican-American culture. When Remini was 14, she left school against the advice of her mother. Her mother warned that it was fine not to achieve at school only if she was going to achieve in life.
At the beginning of her working life, Remini had a variety of jobs, such as waitressing, selling car insurance, and as a telemarketer for a solar heating company.
On July 19, 2003 she married actor Angelo Pagan. He is a musician and aspiring actor, and has 3 sons from a previous relationship. A documentary of the wedding was aired on the VH1 series Inside Out. On June 16, 2004, she gave birth to a daughter, Sofia Bella. This was chronicled on the VH1 documentary Inside Out: Leah Remini the Baby Special.
Remini stands 5' 3" (1.60 m) tall, and her weight has varied widely after childbirth, a fact she was heard to lament on an episode of Fat Actress. Remini gained weight when she got pregnant during the middle seasons of the King of Queens, but lost the weight and was slim again by the show's 9th and final season.
Remini's entrance into television came in the mid-'80s, when she got her first speaking line as an actress on an episode of Head of the Class. Later she was on the show Cheers where she appeared as Carla Tortelli's daughter Serafina on two episodes. Leah played the lead on Living Dolls, a short-lived spin-off from Who's the Boss? In 1991, she had a recurring role as Stacy Carosi, a love interest of Zack Morris, on Saved by the Bell (during the summer when the gang worked at the Malibu Sands Beach Club) and starred in the short-lived sitcom The Man in the Family. Remini also guest starred in The Commish, where her character was involved in the plot line responsible for Geoffrey Naufft's departure from the show. She gained some popularity with her role as Terri Reynolds on the 1997 NBC comedy series Fired Up. She starred as the main character Carrie in the TV sitcom The King of Queens.She had several guest appearances on shows such as Evening Shade, Diagnosis: Murder, NYPD Blue and Friends (in the Season 1 episode "The One with the Birth"). She originally auditioned for the part of Monica Geller but did not get the role. She has also appeared on MTV Cribs.
Remini is a practitioner of Scientology. In December 2005, she helped promote the gala opening of Scientology's controversial "Psychiatry: An Industry of Death" Museum. Previously, on CNN, responding to criticism of Scientology, she said: "If somebody is going to get turned off about something because of what they read or heard, then that person's not smart enough to even enter a church. If you're really against something, then know what you're against."
Leah Remini voiced the character of Grace Nakimura in the 1993 computer game Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers for Sierra On-Line.
Remini recently starred in an online 5 episode series, called In The Motherhood, along with Chelsea Handler and Eileen Galindo. The show was on MSN and it was based on being a mother where users could submit their stories to have it made into real webisodes.
