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Lucy Lawless: Warrior Princess

Birth name Lucille Francis Ryan

Nickname Unco, short for Uncoordinated Loo Luce

Height 5' 10½" (1.79 m)

Lucy Lawless was born Lucille Frances Ryan on March 29, 1968, in Mount Albert, , New Zealand; she was the 5th of 7 children, of Frank and Julie Ryan. Lucy enjoyed acting and appeared in many plays in high school. Later, she attended Auckland University and studied German, Italian and French for a year. As many young people from New Zealand do, she then headed for her O.E. (that's "Overseas Experience").

Lucy left college and headed for Europe where she and her boyfriend, Garth Lawless, traveled around Switzerland and Germany (to earn travel money, she picked grapes on the beautiful Rhine, "for about 3 seconds" she said later in a TV interview). Then Lucy and Garth headed to to earn some more travel money; they found work with a gold mining company outside of Kalgoorlie, about 500 miles from Perth. Lucy and Garth were married in Australia in 1988, and then returned to New Zealand where Lucy had a daughter, Daisy.

Lucy was chosen Mrs. New Zealand in 1989. She did a "really bad, cheesy commercial for travel" which led to her first real acting job in a New Zealand comedy troupe show called "Funny Business." Later, Lucy landed the job as co-host for Air New Zealand Holiday, a travel magazine. Lucy worked in numerous television and film productions. Finally, she got her breakout role of Lysia in " and the Amazon Women" (1994) (TV). Shortly thereafter, the producers needed someone to play Xena. Lucy, tall (5' 10- 1/2"), athletic, with brown hair and blue eyes, was perfect for the part. But there was a snag: at first, the producers (what do they know?) did not want Lucy for the part of Xena - after all, she had played a different character already. So, Lucy dyed her light hair a dark brown, making her look a bit different, and history was about to be made! Lucy, in her leather outfit and armed with her mighty Chakram, was thus cast in her signature role of Xena in 3 episodes of "Hercules: The Legendary Journeys" (1995) - "The Warrior Princess"; "The Gauntlet" and "The Unchained Heart" - that led to her own spin-off series, "Xena: Warrior Princess" (1995). Although "Xena" immediately got a huge fan following in America, ironically "Xena" was not being shown in her native New Zealand, so Lucy did not achieve her tremendous popularity in her homeland until a bit later.

In October 1996, Lucy came to America to be on Jay Leno's "Tonight" show. She was to do a publicity stunt, making a grand entrance by riding a horse in the parking lot. The horse tripped on the cement, Lucy fell and broke her pelvis. (Ironically, for the entire 6- year run of "Xena," doing her own stunts and riding horses she never received a serious injury.)

After convalescence and another season of "Xena," Lucy returned to America for another visit; making her Broadway debut playing Betty Rizzo in "" from September to October, 1997. Also, following her divorce from Garth in 1995, she became engaged to "Xena" executive producer Robert G. Tapert at that time. They married in Santa Monica, California on March 28, 1998. On October 16, 1999, they had a son, Julius Robert Bay Tapert, born in New Zealand.

Although "Xena" has been canceled after a fantastic 6-year run, millions of Lucy Lawless fans know it is still just the beginning for her, and we look forward to her new film projects.

Reference: Biography for Lucy Lawlesshttp://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005128/bio