Lucy Lawless
Lucy Lawless | |
|---|---|
| Born | Lucille Frances Ryan |
| Height | 5 ft 11 in (1.80 m) |
| Website | Lawless Ink - Official Lucy Lawless Fan Club |
Lucy Lawless (born Lucille Frances Ryan on March 29, 1968 in Mount Albert, New Zealand) is a New Zealand actress and singer best known for her role as Xena on the television series Xena: Warrior Princess from 1995 to 2001.
Lucy Lawless was the fifth of seven children born to Frank and Julie Ryan. She has five brothers and one sister. Lucy began acting in secondary school. At Auckland University, she studied foreign languages for a year. She dropped out and left for Europe with her boyfriend, Garth Lawless, to travel in Germany and Switzerland. The couple then moved to Australia, where Lucy worked briefly as a gold miner.
At 19, Lucy became pregnant. In 1988, Lucy and Garth married in Kalgoorlie, Australia. They returned to New Zealand and had a daughter, Daisy Lawless (born July 15, 1988). The couple divorced in 1995. Lawless married Xena executive producer, Robert G. Tapert, on March 28, 1998. Lawless and Tapert have two sons: Julius Robert Bay Tapert (born October 16, 1999) and Judah Miro Tapert (born May 7, 2002), both born in Auckland, New Zealand.
Filmography
Lawless had a guest role in New Zealand TV series Shark in the Park (1990), around the same time as future Xena actor Karl Urban.
In 1994, Lawless appeared in Hercules and the Amazon Women, the pilot film for Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. In the episode, she played a man-hating Amazon named Lysia. Her key role was given to her when she was asked to play a villainous warrior woman named Xena in an episode entitled "The Warrior Princess" which aired in March 1995. Vanessa Angel had originally been cast in the role, but fell ill and was unable to travel to New Zealand for shooting. To differentiate between Xena and the similar Lysia, Lawless' hair was dyed dark brown. Xena subsequently returned in two more episodes of Hercules' first season.
Xena underwent a change of heart over the course of her several Hercules episodes, and decided to devote her life to fighting for good to make up for her past misdeeds. The character was popular enough that a spin-off series was created for her. Xena: Warrior Princess debuted on 4 September 1995 (although Lawless appeared as yet another character, Lyla, in an episode of Hercules entitled "Outcast" that aired a month after Xena' debuted).
Xena, like its parent program, was a hit, lasting six seasons, and Lawless became an international celebrity. She even appeared as a super-powered version of herself on The Simpsons, though she spoke with an American accent, as she did when hosting Saturday Night Live in 1998, rather than her native New Zealander accent.
In 1997, Lawless was named one of the "50 Most Beautiful People in the World" by People magazine. Days earlier on 6 May 1997, Lawless suffered a wardrobe malfunction and inadvertently exposed one of her breasts as she concluded a performance of the US national anthem at an NHL hockey game in Anaheim, California between the Mighty Ducks and Detroit Red Wings [1]. Lawless was quoted in Newsweek as saying "I was mortified. . . . It was quite a bit more exposure than I want".
![[1]](http://www.justwide.com/images/lucy_lawless.jpg){kind=link}
Lawless has since appeared onstage in the Vagina Monologues, and as a television guest star in episodes of The X-Files, Just Shoot Me, The Bernie Mac Show, Two and a Half Men, and Veronica Mars. She was also featured in the short-lived television series Tarzan. Lawless has made cameo appearances in the movies EuroTrip, Spider-Man, and the horror film Boogeyman. She returned to television to battle bugs in the TV movie Locusts! and its sequel Vampire Bats.
From 2005 onwards, Lawless has had a recurring role in the television series Battlestar Galactica. She portrays D'Anna Biers, a reporter with the Fleet News Service who works on a critical documentary about the crew of the Galactica and is later revealed to be a Cylon (Number Three). In 2007, she is slated to star in the new ABC TV series Football Wives - a remake of the BBC drama Footballers' Wives which ran for five years. Instead of soccer players, this series will be about the wives of professional American football players.[1]
Lawless has a cult following in the lesbian community, largely because of her role as Xena and Xena's ambiguous relationship with travelling companion Gabrielle.[2] Although Lawless is heterosexual, she appreciates her gay and lesbian fans and has appeared at gay pride events such as the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.[3] In a 2003 interview with Lesbian News magazine, she said that she had come to see Xena and Gabrielle's relationship as gay after viewing the series finale, though she has also stated on several occasions that she was undecided on the nature of the relationship whilst playing the role.[4]
Lawless competed as one of the celebrity singers on the reality TV show Celebrity Duets, which premiered August 29, 2006, on the U.S. Fox channel. She finished runner-up to Alfonso Ribeiro.
Lawless moon
Lucy Lawless has also been referenced in astronomy. Astronomer Mike Brown nicknamed the newly discovered dwarf planet Eris "Xena", finding this name more convenient to use than the then-official designation "2003 UB313". When this object was determined to be larger than Pluto, it gained international attention and forced a year-long debate among astronomers as to the definition of planet.
The planet's nickname "Xena" was widely used in the press. So popular did the name become that, when the New Scientist magazine polled the public on their preferred final name for the tenth planet, "Xena" ranked no. 4. [5]. Lawless rang Mike Brown in December 2005 to thank him for his "senseless act of beauty," and claimed that she "never dared hope [the name] would stick." [6].
Although planet "Xena" is now officially known as "Eris", Brown made an indirect tribute to Lawless by naming Eris's moon Dysnomia after the Greek goddess of lawlessness. [7]