Jillian Noel Hennessy

Jillian Noel Hennessy was born on November 25, 1968. She is a Canadian actress, singer and musician. Her most well-known roles include American television's Law & Order where she was the prosecutor Claire Kincaid for three seasons and Crossing Jordan for six. She has also appeared on films like RoboCop 3 (most wanted) and Crossing Jordan (which she wrote and directed). Hennessy was born in Edmonton, Alberta. John Hennessy was her father. He was a meat marketer and an executive in sales and marketing. This job required lots of travel, which resulted in frequent family relocations. The mother of her child, Maxine, a secretary, left the family in 1982 and left her daughter to be partially taken care of by her maternal grandmother, Eleanor and her family in Kitchener, Ontario. John Paul Hennessy Jr. has a younger brother and Jacqueline, a twin sister. Jacqueline is a journalist and host on a Canadian TV program. Hennessy's ancestral ancestry includes Irish, French, Swedish and Italian heritage from her father's side and mostly Ukrainian Roma on her mother's. She was educated at Stanley Park Senior Public School and then was a graduate of Grand River Collegiate Institute in Kitchener, Ontario and busked in the Toronto subway. Hennessy, her sister and her first role on stage was as twin call girls in 1988's Dead Ringers. According to Gillian Anderson (the actress who got the role), she was shortlisted for Dana Scully's part on The X-Files. In 1993, Hennessy was signed by Dick Wolf as Claire Kincaid as the assistant district attorney on the NBC crime drama Law & Order. The role ran for three seasons. She left the show after 1996.