Gratuitous Brunette: Jill Hennessy

Canada's Jill Hennessy first came to my notice when she emerged through the revolving doors in the casting department at Law & Order; undoubtedly, though, there are those - such as the pervs who like to spank it to the twisted works of twisted Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg - who will remember her and her sister Jacqueline for playing twin call girls in his twisted 1988 gynecological S&M epic Dead Ringers.

So while she might have been a sensation as Dana Scully, on The X-Files (a role that, of course, went to Gillian Anderson) it was as ADA Claire Kincaid that American audiences came to know her, and it was as Jordan Cavanaugh on Crossing Jordan that they came to know her even better still.

Following a high profile role as First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy in the TV-movie Jackie, Ethel, Joan: The Women of Camelot*, something tells me we haven't heard the last of Jill Hennessy; if anyone can pull a third act out of her career she can. Not only has she been recording an album in Nashville - bolstered, no doubt, by the acclaim her barefooted onstage jam sessions with the Indigo Girls have earned her - but she recently directed an independent film about the lives and loves of a group of thespians called The Acting Class.

*Based on the book by famed celebrity biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli.
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