Personal life
Leoni was born in New York City to Anthony Pantaleoni, a corporate lawyer, and Emily Patterson, a dietician. Leoni's paternal grandfather, Guido Pantaleoni, had an Italian father and an American mother; her paternal grandmother, Helenka Tradusa Adamowska, was a film and stage actress who was born in the U.S. to Polish parents. Leoni states in the October 27, 2006 Life magazine that she became a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF partially because her grandmother Helenka was the president of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF for 25 years. Leoni's mother was born in Texas, as were her maternal grandparents, Virgil Pearson Patterson and Florry Roberts. Leoni married actor David Duchovny on May 6, 1997. Their first child, daughter Madelaine West Duchovny, was born on April 24, 1999, and their second, son Kyd Miller Duchovny, was born on June 15, 2002.
Career
A graduate of Brearley School, The Putney School and Sarah Lawrence College (Anthropology, Psychology), Leoni went on to star in a number of TV series and movies, starting as "Lisa DiNapoli" on Santa Barbara in 1989. She starred in the 1995 box-office hit Bad Boys, along with Will Smith and Martin Lawrence. Her most commercially successful movie was Deep Impact, in which her character, "Jenny Lerner," breaks the story of a comet that is going to hit Earth. She also starred in Woody Allen's movie Hollywood Ending, with Allen and Mark Rydell. In 2004, she starred in Spanglish with Adam Sandler, Cloris Leachman, and Paz Vega (a Spanish actress with whom she spoke Italian off-set).
In 1993, she landed the starring role in Fox's Flying Blind, a short-lived sitcom.
In 1995, Leoni landed the lead role in the television sitcom The Naked Truth, playing Nora Wilde, a tabloid news journalist. The show was a minor hit and lasted until 1998.
She was ranked #79 on the FHM 100 Sexiest Women of 2000.
An asteroid, 8299 Tealeoni, has been named after her. While on The Tonight Show starring Jay Leno, Leoni admitted that she had incorrectly filled out her 2000 general election absentee ballot. She had intended to vote for Al Gore, but instead accidentally voted for someone named "Howard" (most likely Howard Phillips, the very paleoconservative candidate of the Constitution Party).
