Sophia Petrillo is a character from the sitcom television series The Golden Girls and its spin-offs The Golden Palace and Empty Nest. She also appeared in episodes of the series Blossom and Nurses. Her character was played by the actress Estelle Getty for 10 years and 258 episodes. Chronology Early history Sophia was born in Sicily to Angelo, Sr. and Eleanor. Their family name was never established in the series. She had two sisters, Angela and Regina, and a brother, Angelo, Jr. Although another brother was mentioned, he was unnamed and was only spoken of a few times. Dorothy mentions an "Uncle Vito" in Season 2, but it is unclear whether he is Sophia's brother or the brother of her husband, Salvadore. In the first episode of The Golden Palace (1992) Sophia was described as a 87-year-old who experiences flashbacks to her younger life in Sicily, depicting herself as a young peasant girl having multiple romantic affairs earlier in life (1912 and 1922). However, in another Season 2 episode "And Then There Was One", Sophia claims she had been "walking since 1904." These discrepancies are likely due to age-related cognition errors, or more likely, dramatic license taken by the show's producers. As a teenager, while living in a village in Sicily, Sophia was briefly engaged to a young man, Augustine Bagatelli. She also claims that she was once engaged to her brother - something largely dismissed as a joke in the episode. Later, she became engaged to Giuseppe Mangiacavallo, who jilted her at the altar. Sophia's first marriage to Guido Spirelli (she was 14 and it was an arranged marriage) ended in annulment, after which, she moved to New York, which left her with no accent to show she had grown up speaking the Sicilian language. Instead, she sports a Brooklyn accent with a fast speaking pace, which often contributed to the humor in her one-liners. Sophia later married Salvadore "Sal" Petrillo (played in flashbacks by Sid Melton) and had three children with him: Dorothy, now a divorced substitute teacher; Phil (an unseen character), a cross-dresser with a wife named Angela; he was a welder with several children who lived in a trailer park in Newark, New Jersey. He later died of a heart attack during the series. Sophia's other daughter, Gloria (played by Doris Belack and later Dena Dietrich), lived in California and married into money but later lost