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Xena
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Biography
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LUCY LAWLESS
Lucy Frances Ryan was the fifth of seven children born to
Julie and Frank Ryan. Lucy's father became mayor of Mt. Albert the year Lucy was born.
Lucy attended mainly convent
schools apart from a two-year public school stint. With an early interest in acting, Lucy appeared in numerous musicals and
plays throughout her high school years.
Following graduation at 17, Lucy attended Auckland University for a short
time before she left for Europe "to go grape-picking on the Rhine." When money ran out she took off for Australia, Lucy
signed on with a gold-mining company operating in Kalgoorlie, a small town in the outback about 500 miles from Perth.
Subsequently, she was relocated to a tiny mining camp two hours further from civilization. Lucy was one of very few
women miners, but she did the same grueling work as the men-digging, mapping, the ground, driving trucks and pushing
huge core samples of earth through a diamond saw.
Lucy married in Australia and returned to Auckland shortly
thereafter, their daughter, Daisy, currently 14 years old, was born in July 1988.
With a renewed determination to pursue an acting career, Lucy
began doing television commercials before landing her first real acting job at age 20. With a comedy troup on television
called "Funny Business." In 1989, Lucy was crowned Ms. New Zealand. Afterwards, Lucy guest-starred in a variety
of roles on episodic TV. Then, she moved to Vancouver, Canada for eight months to study at the William Davis Center
for Actors Study. After returning to New Zealand in early 1992, Lucy began co-hosting for "Air New Zealand Holiday,"
a travel magazine show broadcaset in New Zealand and throughout Asia, which took her around the world. After co-hosting
a second season of the show, Lucy was cast in "Hercules & the Amazon Women," as Lysia, an Amazon enforcer.
This movie was the first of the five two-hour "Action Pack" movies for television which launched the infamous series.
Lucy also appeared as Lyla, the lovely young bride of Deric
the Centaur, on the Hercules series and later in the same series as Xena. It was a 3 episode set in the hit series'
first season. She produced such strong viewer response that a spin-off was based on her.
The role of Xena was Lucy's first major breakthrough as an
actress. Lawless describes the character as "a woman as strong as any man or woman has ever been, who lives by her wits,
but is also a fighter. She's a very human hero, who knows all about the darker side of human nature since she must battle
it within herself every day."
Lawless had no special training in martial arts, sword play,
or stunt work when she landed the role of Xena. Though, she did have some experience with horses, having ridden a great
deal as a teenager. Lucy is a very agile person with a natural aptitude for the kinds of physical challenges the
role demands. And, during a brief visit to Los Angeles, she also trained with martial arts master Douglas Wong. (Dragon:
The Bruce Lee Story.") to learn basic kung fu moves, as well as fighting techniquest with swords and staffs.
Lucy also has an aptitude for languages and accents.
She speaks English, German, French, and some Italian, and has often worked on US productions requiring a mid-American accent.
Despite having studied opera for several years, Lucy's passion is for jazz, quoting Nina Simone as a favorite.
Other projects Lucy has worked on include the short film,
"Peach," various appearances on television including "The Ray Bradbury Theater," "The New Adventures of the Black Stallion,"
and a role in the docudrama, "Rainbow Warrior," about the eponymous Greenpeace ship that was sunk in New Zealand by
the French.
In late 2001, Lucy was keeping busy after the cancellation
of Xena with an upcoming role as a punk in "Spiderman." She also guest-starred as Shannon McMahon, a super soldier,
in the first 2 episodes of X-Files in November 2001.
Recently,she had her hair cut and was discovered to be
pregnant. The child is expected in May.
Lucy and her husband, Rob Tapert, announced the birth
of their son, Julius Robert Bay Tapert on Saturday, October 16 at 7:01 AM (NZ date/time) in Auckland, New Zealand.
the baby was 21 1/2 inches long and weighed 8 lbs, 13 oz.
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Date of Birth: March 29, 1968
Birthplace: Mt. Albert, Auckland, New Zealand
Hair: Black
Eyes: Intense Blue
Height:
5'11
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Date of Birth: February 15, 1971
Birthplace: Houston, Texas
Hair: Blonde
Eyes: Green
Height: 5'3 1/2
Born on February 15, 1971, in Houston, Texas, Renee O'Connor grew up in
the suburb of Katy. She recalled studying acting from age twelve at Houston's Alley Theatre:
Luckily for me they had a children's program, and so we would use these wonderful
costumes and amazing clay sets. And it's funny because everything was make-believe, and here I am again, you know, at twenty-nine
years old, and still doing it. I think that's where it all stems from-you know, that sense of play.
O'Connor's first, unconventional acting gig came at sixteen, prancing through a
Six Flags amusement park as a succession of costumed cartoon characters.
It was the funniest thing you'd ever imagine! But it was wonderful because
you are larger than life and can play comedy and it was very physical. So we would do shows where we would actually dance
and have music and the voices would be over the top.
After a stint at the High School of the Performing and Visual Arts in Houston,
O'Connor, then seventeen, moved to Los Angeles to hone her sense of play as a professinal actress. In 1989, Disney cast her
in the first of two serials on The Mickey Mouse Club, "Teen Angel," reviving an old series favorite, "Spin and Marty." Stretching
from G-rated fare to HBO horror, O'Connor briefly appeared in an episode of Tales from the Crypt, directed by Arnold Schwarzenegger.
In 1991, she played Cherly Ladd's daughter in the miniseries Changes. "It was a Danielle Steel novel," she volunteered with
an embarrased smile. Two years later O'Connor starred as one of a group of students washed away by a river in the NBC movie
The Flood. "It was based on a true story in Texas but filmed in Austrailia, which was so funny, especially since I'm from
Texas. Bit it was pretty exciting."
Other feature films and TV roles followed. She appeared in another Disney production,
The Adventures of Huck Finn, with Elijah Wood and Jason Robards. "It was a small part but it was wonderful, filled with humor,
a nice period piece set in Natchez [Mississippi]." A guest appearance on The Rockford Files "was one of the highlights for
me because I was and am such a fan of James Garner." Sandwiched between these and other performances O'Connor appeared in
two mythic action films for Renaissance Pictures: Hercules and the Lost Kingdom (1994) and the direct to video release of
Darkman II: The Return of Durant (1995).
At her audition for the role of Deianeira in Hercules and the Lost Kingdom, O'Connor
displayed considerable more humor than she inteneded:
I just remember standing up on this chair in the middle of the room and playing
this girl who wanted to be sacrificed to the gods, and then I ended up falling down and I hit some equipment in Rob Tapert's
office. I kept apologizing, "Oh, no! I ruined all your things, I'm so sorry!
Tapert's good humor never faded, and he encouraged O'Connor to continue. Despite
her misgivings, Tapert viewed the audition as a success: he had not lost equipment, he had gained an appealing lead acctress.
When Xena: Warrior Princess was created in 1995 O'Connor won the key
role of Gabrielle from a field of more than 400 aspirants. Willa O'Neill, who plays Gabrielle's sister Lila, called O'Connor
"an incredibly giving actress" who made acting "a joy":
What I like about her is that she's actually interested in the skills of acting
from just a playful point of view. She'll give good tips and she makes up little scenes and games off-camera to keep your
acting fresh. She even gets the extras rocked up enough so that they're not static in the background. She'll say, "O.K., guys,
now, we're just about to go to war and you're all gathering your stuff." I appreciate that she's making life a lot easier
for everyone around her by being interested in what she's doing.
O'Connor summed up her approach to playing Gabrielle and her friendship wiht the
Warrior Princess:
They [Rob Taper and R.J. Stewart] were looking for sombody spunky, spirited, who
could hold her own with Xena eventually, and so that was the guidline I began with. And then I took the idea of her being
a storyteller and really clicked with that. Everything that she hadn't seen before but had only heard through stories and
from her readings, she now could see herself living through Xena. And I made her very romantic, sentimental, and sympathetic,
full of the wonder and mystery of life. So she would be the opposite of Xena but wanted to be like her. And where Xena could
be dysfunctional and Gabrielle would be her opposite, together they make one person!
The five foot three inch, reddish blond, green eyed actress looks far more youthful
than her twenty nine years. She has a gentle, kindly manner that recalls her character Gabrielle, through O'Connor said she
envies Gabrielle's unwavering optimism. Off camera she relaxes by rock climbing (her modest description for activities that
have included ascending Mount Kilimanjaro!), kick boxing, jogging, Rollerbladding, and in sharp contrast to Gabrielle horseback
riding.
This page last updated 1/6/04
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