Jill Hennessy

JILL HENNESSY

Date of Birth: November 25, 1969

This native of Edmonton, Alberta has a mixed ancestry of Irish, Italian, Swedish, French and Ukranian. Her twin sister, Jacqueline, is also an actress. While growing up, Jill became fluent in a number of languages including Italian, French and Spanish. At twelve, she became interested in acting. She began her acting career in Toronto with David Cronenberg's Dead Ringers playing an escort with her twin sister. She then studied improv-comedy at Second City with Deb Kimmet.

Two years later, she moved to New York and signed a deal to play Assistant District Attorney Claire Kincaid on the long running hit series, Law & Order. During her three year run, she also spent time working in feature films like RoboCop 3 (1993), Ron Howard's The Paper (1994), and I Shot Andy Warhol (1996).

For the next few years she landed gigs in a number of forgettable movies, but in 1999 she landed a starring role in the miniseries uremberg opposite Alec Baldwin. Roles in major productions such as Autumn in New York and Exit Wounds followed. In 2001, she landed the lead role in the NBC-TV crime series Crossing Jordan and in 2007, she won a Gracie Allen award as "Outstanding Female Lead in a Drama Series" for her work on the show.

In 2000, she married fellow actor Paolo Mastropietro. They have two children together. In 2007, she was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame.