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Lucy Lawless (born Lucille Frances Ryan
on March 29, 1968 in Mount Albert) 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 . Lawless was quoted
in Newsweek as saying "I was mortified. . . . It
was quite a bit more exposure than I want".
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 to 2007, 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 was slated to star in the new ABC
TV series Football Wives - a remake of the ITV drama
Footballers' Wives which ran for five years. Instead of
soccer players, this series would have been about the
wives of professional American football players.
However, Lucy announced on her official website that the
show had not been picked up by ABC.
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.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. 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.
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.
Singing career: Since her role as Xena, Lawless
has pursued a new career in singing. She made her
onstage debut at the Roxy in Hollywood on January 13,
2007. Lawless was welcomed by a sold out crowd of
adoring fans for back-to-back concerts. She released her
first CD, entitled "Come 2 Me", and featuring
a duet with RuPaul. Lawless has since scheduled three
concerts in New York, spanning from May 31 to June 2,
2007.
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. 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."
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. |
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