Jill Hennessy

She's a native Edmontonian who has Irish, Italian and Swedish roots, along with French, Ukrainian, French and Swedish. Jacqueline is her twin sister and also an actor. When she was growing up, Jill became fluent in various languages like Italian, French and Spanish. As a teenager, she started to get intrigued by acting. She started her acting career in Toronto with David Cronenberg's Dead Ringers playing an escort together with her twin sister. She then studied improv comedy on Second City under Deb Kimmet. The actress made the move into New York two years later and signed a contract to portray Detective Assistant Claire Kincaid in the hit lengthy-running show Law & Order. In the course of her three-year run, she also spent time acting in feature films such as RoboCop 3 (1993), Ron Howard's The Paper (1994), as well as I Shot Andy Warhol (1996). She was a part of a handful of boring films during the subsequent years, before landing her a leading role in 1999's miniseries uremberg which was co-produced by Alec Baldwin. Autumn in New York followed and so did Exit Wounds. In 2001, she got leading roles in the crime-themed NBC series Crossing Jordan and in 2007 she took home the Gracie Allen award as "Outstanding Female Lead in the drama Series" in recognition of her performance on the show. The actress got married to another actor Paolo Mastropietro in 2000. They have two children together. In 2007 the couple was recognized as a member of Canada's Walk of Fame.