All About Leah Remini's Daughter Sofia Bella Pagán

Mar. 15, 2025

Photo: Leah Remini/Instagram

Leah Remini’s daughter is all grown up!

TheKing of Queensstar shares one child, daughter Sofia Bella Pagán, 20, with estranged husbandAngelo Pagán. Remini and Pagán welcomed Sofia one year after their 2003 Las Vegas wedding and remained together until theirseparation in August 2024.

“You really don’t realize until you have a child how much you can love another person … I literally can say I would die for this person,” Remini said of her daughter in a2015 promofor her TLC reality show,It’s All Relative. “… And when you realize, ‘I will stand in front of a truck for my kid,’ you realize, I really love this person. That’s crazy love.”

During a 2019 conversation with friendMichelle VisageforLarry King Now, Remini admitted that raising a daughter the right way can be “difficult.”

“I want her to be different,” theKevin Can Waitalum said while discussing her and Visage’s parenting styles. “I want her to grow up a little classier than her mother and father, I mean, call me crazy … She’s empathetic and compassionate and that really is what I care about, that she’s a person that cares for others and she’s a person that sticks up for others.”

Visage added that Sofia was a “ballsy chick, like her mom,” which Remini agreed with, saying, “She is. She speaks up, she speaks out, and that’s something I’m really, really proud of. I’m proud of her heart.”

When Sofia turned 18 in 2022, Remini shared a sweet tribute alongside video footage takenshortly after Sofia’s birthto celebrate her daughter officially becoming an adult. “Sofia Bella, I can honestly say I have never known love until the day I held you in my arms,” theTroublemakerauthor wrote on Instagram. “I am crying as I try and post something here to tell you how much you have given me. Making me, your mom has been my greatest honor. Daddy and I adore you.”

Here’s everything to know about Leah Remini’s daughter, Sofia Bella Pagán.

She was born in Los Angeles

Leah Remini Instagram

Though both of her parents grew up on the East Coast — Remini was born and raised in Brooklyn, while Pagán was born in Puerto Rico and grew up in New York City — Sofia was born in Los Angeles on June 16, 2004.

To honor National Daughter’s Day in 2022,Remini shared a throwback photo of her holding newborn Sofiaand wrote, “The best thing that ever happened to me.”

She grew up “obsessed” with female pop singers

While Sofia hasn’t followed in her parents' acting footsteps quite yet, she’s been comfortable with the spotlight from a young age.

In 2009, theSecond Actstar told PEOPLE that Sofia, who was then obsessed withKelly Clarkson,PinkandMiley Cyrus' “The Climb,” “just started singing very loudly.”

“She used to really not want to be listened to or looked at, and now it’s like full-on concerts,” Remini said. “[She is] like, ‘Have you heard me sing this song … and 18 songs on my iPod?’ "

More than a decade later, Pagán — a singer, dancer and actor — shared a throwback photo joking about his daughter’s “last gig with the bandbefore she quit!” “Something about she couldn’t work with the lead singer. #creativedifferences,” he wrote on Instagram in May 2020.

Her childhood crushes were Jake Gyllenhaal and Orlando Bloom

In 2010, then-6-year-old Sofia interviewed her mom forRedbook.In the cute Q&A, Remini revealed that her young daughter had a crush onJake Gyllenhaal, while Sofia herself namedOrlando Bloom.

Sofia also listed some of her favorite movies at the time, which were “Prince of Persia,Chronicles of Narniaand I loooveKarate KidbecauseJaden [Smith]is my friend.”

She got her driver’s license and went to prom during the COVID-19 pandemic

Sofia hit quite a few milestones in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. Those major moments in 2021 and 2022 included starting her senior year of high school, getting her driver’s license, going to prom and graduating high school.

She is a college student

Stefanie Keenan/WireImage

In the fall of 2022, Sofia started her freshman year of college.

However, just a few months later, Remini told PEOPLE"things didn’t go as planned"and Sofia had recentlystarted courses at another university.

“I moved her into a dorm room and came home heartbroken to a quiet house. Things didn’t go as planned, and we got our daughter home for another few months,” Remini said. “In January, we moved her into another college and her apartment. It’s been a few weeks since she left for the second time, and my husband and I are even more of a mess now.”

The beginning of Sofia’s college career also came at a special time for the mother-daughter duo as Remini had also started working toward a degree of her own in 2022. In May 2024,Remini announced she had earned her associate’s degree from New York Universityand is now working on her bachelor’s degree.

Remini has described Sofia as “strong-minded”

In February 2022, Remini opened up to PEOPLE about her life nine years after leaving the Church of Scientology. The actress and host of thePEOPLE Puzzlergame show said that if she had not left the church after 30 years in 2013 with Pagán,Sofia “wouldn’t be the strong-minded kid she is now, who, hopefully, is going to make some positive change in the world.”

The actress continued, “I’m always saying to her and her friends, ‘I hope you are going to take all this genius and get your asses into Congress.’ That’s how you’re going to change things.”

Remini added that seeing Sofia succeed was worth the past struggle of leaving Scientology, which she documented in her A&E seriesLeah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath.

“My friend Sherry, who also left the church and has a son in college now, recently texted me, ‘Aren’t we so jealous of our kids?’ " Remini recalled. “We wish we had what we’ve given them.”

source: people.com