Jill Hennessy

This native from Edmonton, Alberta has a mix of ancestry from Irish, Italian, Swedish, French and Ukranian. She has a twin sister named Jacqueline is also an actress. While growing up, Jill became fluent in several languages, including Italian, French and Spanish. She became interested in acting at the age of 12. In Toronto, she began her career as an actress in David Cronenberg's Dead Ringers. She played an escort in the show with one of the sisters. Following her improv classes with Deb Kimmet in Second City, she began her acting career in Toronto. A few years later, she went to New York and signed a deal to portray the Assistant District Attorney Claire Kincaid on the long run of the hit show, Law & Order. In addition, she appeared in movies including RoboCop 3 (1998), Ron Howard's The Paper (2000) and I Shot Andy Warhol 1996) in her three-year tenure. The years following she was offered roles in a series of forgettable flicks. But in 1999, she got a role as the lead in the miniseries uremberg along with Alec Baldwin. Autumn in New York followed the show, along with Exit Wounds. In 2001 she was cast in the role of the main character in the NBC-TV crime series Crossing Jordan and in 2007 she took home a Gracie Allen award as "Outstanding Female lead in a Drama Series" for her work on the show. She married another actor, Paolo Mastropietro in 2000. The couple has two children. In 2007, she was inducted into the Canadian Walk of Fame in 2007.