Lucy Lawless Biography / Pictures

Biography

Lucy Lawless was born the fifth child of Frank and Julie Ryan. She discovered an enjoyment of acting in high school. At Auckland University, she studied foreign languages for a year. She then left for Europe with her boyfriend to travel around Germany and Switzerland. They went back and landed a job with a mining company in Australia. In 1988, Lucy and Garth Lawless were married. They returned to New Zealand and had a daughter, Daisy.

She had a guest role in 1990 on New Zealand TV series Shark in the Park, around the same time compatriot Karl Urban appeared.

Vanessa Angel was supposed to play a new character, the villainess Xena, in an episode of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, but became sick and was unable to travel to New Zealand. Lucy had previously played two different characters in Hercules, so the directors chose her as a replacement (though Lucy's hair had to be dyed to distinquish her from the previous, unrelated characters). Under the 5'10 1/2" Lucy, Xena's character became popular, so she started to redeem herself and got her own her series, Xena: Warrior Princess. The show was a hit, lasting six seasons.


Lucy Lawless as fleet reporter D'anna Biers on Battlestar Galactica.
Lucy Lawless with son Judah in a promotional poster for World Breastfeeding Week 2002.A testament to the popularity of Xena: Warrior Princess is that Lawless is a universally recognized celebrity even though she has not had a single great success outside of it. She was even immortalized as a character on The Simpsons (playing a super-powered, flying version of herself).

In 1997, Lucy Lawless would be named one of the 50 Most Beautiful People in the World by People magazine. Days earlier on 6 May 1997, Lawless famously and inadvertently exposed her breasts (resulting from a wardrobe malfunction) while singing the US national anthem at an NHL hockey game in Anaheim, California between the Mighty Ducks and Detroit Red Wings. She later said (quoted in Newsweek): "I was mortified. . . . It was quite a bit more exposure than I want".

She has since appeared in the Vagina Monologues, on the first two episodes of the ninth season of The X-Files, and in the short-lived (eight episodes) television series Tarzan. She has had brief appearances in the movies Eurotrip, Spider-Man, and the horror film Boogeyman. Her next role was on TV battling bugs in her new TV-movie Locusts!

In 2005, Lawless has a role in an episode of the television series Battlestar Galactica. She plays D'anna Biers, a reporter who works on a critical documentary about the crew of the Galactica and who, in secret, is actually a Cylon humanoid robot that has infiltrated the ship to gather information. As a blond, and using her native New Zealander accent, many fans of Battlestar Galactica have commented that they did not realize the actress was Lawless (this dispelled early fears that her appearance might be a blatant cameo, and in fact her character met with popular acceptance with the fans). Lawless will return in another episode in the series second season, and moreover agreed to return as a recurring cast member in season 3. Lawless will for a 10 episode arc in the 20 episode long third season. According to interviews, while she normally doesn't want to get too heavily involved in tv anymore, she really liked the writing, plots twists, and overall handling of the series (in fact executive producer David Eick had originally worked with her on Xena).

Lucy and Garth were divorced in 1995. She married the executive producer of Xena, Robert G. Tapert, in 1998. The couple have two sons; Julius Robert Bay Tapert (born 1999) and Judah Miro Tapert (born 2002). They all live in New Zealand.

Due to her character Xena's ambiguous s--uality, Lucy Lawless gained a large cult following in the lesbian community. A new term, dykon, was coined to describe her status as a gay icon. Although she is heteros--ual, Lucy Lawless has enhanced this reputation by appearing at gay pride events such as the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.