Jill Hennessy

Jill Hennessy
Hennessy at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival
Born	Jillian Noel Hennessy Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Occupation	Actress, singer
Years active	1988–present
Spouse(s)	Paolo Mastropietro (2000-present)
Children	2

Jillian Noel "Jill" Hennessy is a Canadian actress and musician. She is most known for her roles on the American television series Law & Order, on which she played prosecutor Claire Kincaid for three seasons, and Crossing Jordan, on which she played the lead character, Jordan Cavanaugh, for six seasons. She has also acted in films such as RoboCop 3 and Most Wanted, and the independent films Chutney Popcorn and The Acting Class, the latter of which she also wrote and co-directed.

Hennessy was born in Edmonton, Alberta. Her father, John Hennessy, was a meat salesman and sales/marketing executive, a job that required considerable travel and resulted in frequent moves for the family. Her mother, Maxine, a secretary, left the family in 1982, leaving her daughter to be partially raised by her paternal grandmother, Eleanor, in Kitchener, Ontario. She has a younger brother, John Paul "J.P." Hennessy, Jr., and an identical twin sister, Jacqueline, who is a magazine writer and TV show host in Canada. Hennessy has Irish, French, Swedish and Italian ancestry on her father's side, and mostly Ukrainian Roma, as well as Austrian, ancestry on her mother's. She attended Stanley Park Senior Public School, then graduated from Grand River Collegiate Institute in Kitchener, Ontario and used to busk in the Toronto subway.