Sophia Petrillo

Sophia Petrillo is a fictional character from the TV series The Golden Girls, and its spin-offs The Golden Palace and Empty Nest and one episode each of the series, Blossom and Nurses. She was portrayed by Estelle Getty for 10 years and 258 episodes. Bea Arthur, who played her daughter Dorothy Zbornak on the show, was in real life a year older than Getty. 2Early history Sophia Petrillo was most likely born in April 1905 in Sicily. She had a sister Angela, a sister Regina, a brother Angelo, and she mentioned another brother, but he was unnamed and 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 her husband Salvadore's. It is revealed in the season 2 episode "A Piece of Cake" that her 50th birthday was in April 1955, placing her date of birth in April 1905. Most of the episodes of The Golden Palace put Sophia's age as between 80 and 85 years old. In the first episode of The Golden Palace (1992) Sophia's age was said to be 87 years old. In her many flashbacks to life in Sicily, she frequently places herself as being a young woman (having romantic affairs) in dates between 1912 and 1920, and in another season 2 episode, "And Then There Was One", Sophia claims she had been "walking since 1904." These discrepancies may be due to either continuity errors or dramatic license on the part of Sophi