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" Sofia Vergara is hurrying toward me \u2014 as fast as a woman in three-inch-plus heels can go \u2014 on a SoHo street in Manhat-tan. She looks 100 percent &amp;quot;Gloria,&amp;quot; her character from Modern Family, showing off her centerfold-circa-1960 body in black leggings and an off-the-shoulder gray sweater. And when she starts talking, she&amp;#039;s just as funny, funny, funny, like your favorite girlfriend from work who makes you laugh in meetings. &amp;quot;Hiiii! How are you? I&amp;#039;m starving!&amp;quot; she says, in that Colombian accent. &amp;quot;I can&amp;#039;t believe I went to the gym this morning \u2014 usually I use any excuse to get out of it. What, these shoes? You like them? These are Steve Madden! Like, cheap! But sooo comfortable.&amp;quot;  We duck into a Mexican restaurant, already deep in conversation. (&amp;quot;I love heels, I&amp;#039;m telling you. When I walk in flats, I get knee pain.&amp;quot;) Sofia, 39, is bracingly honest about her twisty road to the breakout role that has won her sitcom stardom: A native of Barranquilla, Colombia, she&amp;#039;s the daughter of a cattle industry executive and a homemaker. At 17, she was spotted on the beach and cast in a Pepsi commercial wearing a teeny-tiny bikini (she was nervous that the nuns at her Catholic school would be less than thrilled, but \u2014 lucky for her \u2014 they didn&amp;#039;t find out until her final day of high school). She married her childhood sweetheart at 18, had a son, Manolo, at 19, and was divorced by 22. Her next step? Weirdly, it was dental school. But she dropped out to pursue the TV offers that kept coming her way. At 32 (by then a major star in Latin America), she moved to the States to work in TV, including the short-lived 2007 ABC sitcom Knights of Prosperity, where her crack comic timing impressed the producers of Modern Family so much that they wrote the part of Gloria just for her.  Since the show&amp;#039;s 2009 debut, Sofia has earned two Emmy nominations (the 2011 awards go out this month) and her career has exploded, expanding to include movies (like this summer&amp;#039;s The Smurfs), a spokesmodel contract with CoverGirl, and a fall clothing line for Kmart. She lives in Los Angeles with her boyfriend, businessman Nick Loeb, and Manolo, now 19. Between bursts of laughter (and a few F-bombs), she talks about everything from her &amp;quot;ridiculously huge boobs&amp;quot; to a recent mutual swoonfest with her favorite rock star. REDBOOK: You know what I like about you already? You&amp;#039;re studying that menu like it&amp;#039;s the Bible. You&amp;#039;re my kind of girl. SV: [Laughs] I&amp;#039;m obsessed with food! Ooh, everything looks good. [After much deliberation with the waiter in Spanish, she orders corn cakes with chicken.]  RB: So tell me a little bit about The Smurfs. Who do you play? SV: I play the very fashionable owner of a very big makeup company, and she teams up with Gargamel, the bad guy, to try to get ahold of the little Smurfs. RB: And do you have a favorite Smurf? SV: I always loved Smurfette, of course! I used to watch the cartoon in Colombia; it was the biggest TV show for kids, so even my son grew up watching the Smurfs.  RB: You are many people&amp;#039;s favorite part of Modern Family. What do you think it is about Gloria that&amp;#039;s made her so popular? SV: You know what? At the beginning, I was worried. I thought, She&amp;#039;s a sexy woman, divorced with a kid, marrying the older guy, and she&amp;#039;s a gold digger. How are people going to like this character? But the writers have done such a brilliant job. There hasn&amp;#039;t been one person who&amp;#039;s said, &amp;quot;We don&amp;#039;t believe this relationship.&amp;quot; Also, they&amp;#039;ve allowed me to be really Latin \u2014 you know, screaming in Spanish. And I make my accent worse. RB: Have you ever ad-libbed?  SV: Yeah! When Modern Family was just beginning, I&amp;#039;d have to tell the writers what I thought would be better for me to say. Most of them are American men, so to write for a Latin woman is not as natural for them as writing for Julie [Bowen], for example. Because they have wives like Julie, sisters like Julie, you know what I mean? But now they&amp;#039;re so good; they&amp;#039;re like hot Latin girls! RB: There was a hilarious scene in the first season when you&amp;#039;re at your TV son Manny&amp;#039;s soccer game, hollering at the other parents. How much of you is in that portrayal?  SV: A lot. Every time I get a script, I think, How would my mother or my aunt do it? And that&amp;#039;s Gloria.   RB: Who in the cast is similar to their character and who is totally different? SV: I think I&amp;#039;m the most similar. I&amp;#039;m Latin, I have an accent, I have a kid from a previous marriage, and I&amp;#039;m Colombian. Julie is a lot like Claire; she&amp;#039;s very into doing things perfectly. She&amp;#039;s neurotic, in a good way. I think she and I get along so well because we&amp;#039;re very different. They don&amp;#039;t have to alter anything she puts on because she&amp;#039;s superfit. Everything I try on is hours of alterations. There&amp;#039;s no competition of any kind, which is what happens sometimes with women. Rico [Rodriguez], who plays my son, says that he&amp;#039;s not at all like Manny, but we all think he is; he&amp;#039;s an old soul. Eric [Stonestreet] plays a gay guy and he&amp;#039;s not gay, so that&amp;#039;s the most different. But the rest of us, we&amp;#039;re very similar. Ty [Burrell] is exactly Phil. RB: Do you crack each other up?  SV: [Our food arrives, and Sofia digs in.] This is so good! We laugh all the time. During last year&amp;#039;s Halloween episode, the [producers] wanted to kill us because we kept laughing and couldn&amp;#039;t finish the f---ing scene.  RB: Why do you think Modern Family has clicked with people?  SV: People are fans at any age. It&amp;#039;s not like a vampire show that only teenagers are going to like, or Larry David&amp;#039;s show that only a certain kind of adult will like. I&amp;#039;ll see little 6-year-old kids with a grandfather who is 70, and they&amp;#039;ll both say, &amp;quot;We want a picture with you!&amp;quot;  RB: Why do Gloria and Jay work?  SV: I think it&amp;#039;s because they&amp;#039;re perfect for each other in this time of their lives. He gives her everything she didn&amp;#039;t have with her ex-husband: stability, money, help with the kid. And how fantastic for him to have this loving young woman who is also entertaining? Guys at that time of their life, that&amp;#039;s what they want. You know? It&amp;#039;s true. They all wish they had a Gloria [laughs].  RB: Do you get the older-guy appeal?  SV: I never did. I&amp;#039;ve never gone out with a guy who is older than me by more than a couple years. Usually it&amp;#039;s my age, a little bit older, or even a little bit younger. But not a 15- or 20-year difference. RB: Your son, Manolo, is turning 20. What&amp;#039;s your best advice for raising a boy? SV: With girls, you can be on top of them more, but guys, they need their space or they start pulling back. All men are like that. RB: What were some of the positives about being a young mother?  SV: When I had Manolo, I was 19, and I had the energy for everything. My boyfriend now wants to have kids, and I don&amp;#039;t even want to think about it. I would have to get into that mind-set again, the waking up early. And Latin people are so attached to family, so it&amp;#039;s not like you can really say, &amp;quot;Oh, it&amp;#039;s college time \u2014 go.&amp;quot; I do think it was fantastic to have a kid young. My friends now are all panicking if they haven&amp;#039;t found somebody to have kids with. It was never like that for me because I already had the kid!  RB: What were some of the not-so-great things about being a young mom? SV: It&amp;#039;s a big responsibility; you can&amp;#039;t go out much at night. Instead of buying a pair of shoes, you have to buy diapers. When you have a kid, you have to be more mature.  RB: You and Manolo&amp;#039;s dad divorced when you were 21. Do you have any advice for anyone who has been through a divorce? SV: I think that sometimes divorce is a wiser choice. I think it&amp;#039;s much worse for a kid to see parents who hate each other.  RB: Manolo&amp;#039;s leaving for film school this fall. How are you feeling? SV: It&amp;#039;s horrible. But the best thing I did was send him to boarding school this year. I learned to be detached.  RB: Is it true he teases you about your strong accent?  SV: He humiliates me! He doesn&amp;#039;t understand how my accent can get worse and worse. He says, &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s not normal. Nobody does that.&amp;quot; So when I got nominated for the Emmy [in 2010] I called him and said, &amp;quot;Right in your face! Even with my accent!&amp;quot;  RB: You were just nominated again, along with all the other adult cast members on the show. How crazy is that? SV: It is amazing. Last year I thought I just got lucky, but this year it is really sinking in. We all have so much fun shooting the show that the nomination is just an extra gift. RB: You were diagnosed with thyroid cancer years ago. Is it something you feel comfortable talking about? SV: I don&amp;#039;t mind. I&amp;#039;m free of cancer now. It was very hard because I was very young. Just that word is horrible.  RB: How old were you? SV: 28, 29. Very young. I think it&amp;#039;s always a positive thing when you beat it, because it changes your priorities. So there can be good things that come from [the experience].  RB: When did you learn you were funny?  SV: I was always the class clown, but I never thought I would make a living out of it. My family is really funny. Like, my aunts are ridiculously funny, my uncles. I just filmed a commercial for Kmart for my clothing line with eight women from my family. And it was ridiculous \u2014 the photographer couldn&amp;#039;t stop laughing, the makeup artist couldn&amp;#039;t stop laughing. With this commercial I wanted to show that the clothes fit every woman \u2014 that you don&amp;#039;t have to look like me to look great in them.  RB: When you were a kid and you got curves, you weren&amp;#039;t happy with them. When did you start accepting your body? SV: The thing is, I&amp;#039;ve had these ridiculously huge boobs since I was superyoung. Like, 13. I was really skinny at that time, so it was weird to have those f \u2014 ing boobs and be skinny. It was hideous. Then after I had my kid, I got hips and everything started to come together.  RB: Any regrets that you didn&amp;#039;t finish dental school? SV: All the time. What I really wanted to be was a doctor. I love medicine. Everybody calls me all the time \u2014 &amp;quot;I have this condition, what do I do?&amp;quot; But you have to study for 10 years. I knew I couldn&amp;#039;t do that, so I went for the best next thing, which was dentistry.  RB: How does your boyfriend feel about your nickname, &amp;quot;Sofia Viagra&amp;quot;?  SV: He loves it. Well, he doesn&amp;#039;t love it, but he laughs. RB: Would you get married again? SV: If I wanted to have another baby, I would definitely get married. If not, I don&amp;#039;t really think it&amp;#039;s something major because I was already married.  RB: Have you ever heard that someone&amp;#039;s a fan of yours and thought, No way! SV: When I was going to film [the upcoming movie] New Year&amp;#039;s Eve with Jon Bon Jovi \u2014 I mean, in Colombia, he is the biggest thing. I grew up being in love with him. So when I saw him, I was like, &amp;quot;Oh,my God, it&amp;#039;s Bon Jovi!&amp;quot; But when he saw me, he was like, &amp;#039;Oh, my God, it&amp;#039;s Gloria!&amp;quot; It&amp;#039;s just insane. RB: Does it get annoying to be the poster girl for curvy women?  SV: It&amp;#039;s fantastic, because I&amp;#039;m almost 40 years old and they still f---ing put me on these lists of beautiful women! How can I even be in a list with girls who are 15 years younger than me? People are crazy. My son, Manolo, laughs at that too.  RB: Does he really?  SV: To him, I&amp;#039;m an ordinary mom, going, [whines] &amp;quot;Manolo, I&amp;#039;m cold, turn down the air conditioning, I&amp;#039;m exhausted, I cannot go out, let&amp;#039;s rest.&amp;quot; To him, I&amp;#039;m an old woman. It&amp;#039;s hilarious! 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