Jillian Noel Hennessy

Jillian Noel Hennessy is a Canadian actor and singer from Canada. Her most notable roles include those on American television's Law & Order where she was the prosecutor Claire Kincaid for three seasons and Crossing Jordan for six. She has also appeared in films like RoboCop 3 and Most Wanted as well as the indie film Chutney Popcorn and The Acting Class, the latter of which she also wrote and co-directed. Hennessy was born in Edmonton, Alberta. John Hennessy was her father. He was a meat marketer and a sales/marketing executive. This position required many trips and resulted in frequent family relocations. The mother of her child, Maxine, a secretary, left the family in 1982, leaving her daughter partially taken care of by her maternal grandmother, Eleanor, located in Kitchener, Ontario. John Paul Hennessy Jr. is her younger brother. Jacqueline Hennessy is her identical twin sister. Jacqueline is a journalist in Canada. Hennessy has Irish, French, Swedish and Italian heritage on her father's side, and mostly Ukrainian Roma, as well as Austrian as well as Austrian ancestry on her mother's. After finishing her studies at Grand River Collegiate Institute (both located in Kitchener) She was a student at Stanley Park Senior Public School. She also busked on the Toronto subway. Hennessy as well as her sibling were first actors when they appeared as twin call girls in 1988's Dead Ringers. According to Gillian Anderson (the actress who was cast in the role) she was a finalist for Dana Scully's role in The X-Files. In 1993, Hennessy was signed by Dick Wolf as Claire Kincaid, assistant district attorney in the NBC crime drama Law & Order. The role lasted for three seasons before ending the series as an actor in the year 1996.