Kelli Giddish

Kelli Marie Giddish, born April 13, 1980, in Cumming, Georgia, is an American actress working across television, film, and stage. She is the daughter of Charles and Nita Giddish and has one brother, Eli. Her paternal grandfather played an early role in cultivating her interest in performance, taking her to the Fox Theatre in Atlanta. As a youth, Giddish trained at a community theater run by local drama teacher Yatesy Harvey, a friend of her mother, who also organized sleepover drama camps. Giddish has credited Harvey with instilling rigorous standards and a deep commitment to the craft. During her time at Forsyth Central High School, she was part of the school's championship softball team and earned the title of State Literary Champion for Girls Dramatic Interpretation in 1998. She went on to study theater performance at the University of Evansville in Indiana, where her parents attended every production she appeared in.

After graduating, Giddish relocated to New York City to pursue acting professionally. Within a year of arriving, she secured a role in a Broadway play alongside Farrah Fawcett, appearing in Bobbi Boland. She subsequently joined the cast of the daytime soap opera All My Children, portraying Di Henry from 2005 to 2007. In July 2007, Soap Opera Weekly confirmed that Giddish and the show parted ways by mutual agreement, with her final appearance airing on September 19, 2007. During this period she also appeared in the thriller Death in Love, which premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, and took on the role of Courtney in The Burg, credited as the first scripted web series. The same creative team behind The Burg produced All's Faire, in which Giddish played a character named Cindy.

In January 2007, Giddish made a guest appearance on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, playing rape victim Kara Bawson in the episode "Outsider." She next starred as U.S. Marshal Annie Frost in the NBC police procedural Chase, which premiered in autumn 2010 but was pulled from the schedule in early February 2011. NBC later broadcast five previously unaired episodes on Saturday nights beginning April 23, 2011. Prior to Chase, Giddish had been cast alongside Nicholas Bishop and Ravi Patel in the Fox drama Past Life, in which she played a Ph.D. in psychology and cognitive research who believes in reincarnation. The series premiered February 9, 2010, and was canceled nine days later.

On June 27, 2011, it was announced that Giddish would join Law & Order: Special Victims Unit as a series regular beginning with its thirteenth season, alongside Danny Pino, coinciding with Christopher Meloni's departure. She debuted as Detective Amanda Rollins in the season premiere "Scorched Earth," in which Rollins first works with Detective Olivia Benson, played by Mariska Hargitay. On April 16, 2020, Rollins was promoted to second grade detective in the episode "Solving for the Unknowns." Giddish departed as a series regular in season 24, episode 9, "And a Trauma in a Pear Tree," in which Rollins married ADA Dominick Carisi Jr., played by Peter Scanavino, and left the Special Victims Unit to teach at Fordham University. She subsequently returned as a guest in multiple episodes across seasons 24, 25, and 26, and appeared in episodes 21 and 22 of the third season of the spin-off Law & Order: Organized Crime. Beginning with the 27th season in September 2025, Giddish rejoined SVU as a series regular. All three of her pregnancies were incorporated into the show's storylines.

In addition to her acting work, Giddish appeared in the 2011 music video for "Nadine" by Project Jenny, Project Jan, and in May 2018 appeared in the music video for "All Love Is Lost" by Body Count, the band of her SVU co-star Ice-T, from their 2017 album Bloodlust, which featured Max Cavalera of Soulfly and Cavalera Conspiracy as a special guest.

Giddish married Lawrence Faulborn on June 20, 2015, in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. The couple had two sons: Ludo, born in October 2015, and Charlie, born in November 2018. Giddish and Faulborn divorced in 2018. On November 7, 2021, she eloped with Beau Richards, whom she met on the SVU set while he worked as her driver. In June 2023, she gave birth to their first child together, a son named Oldie.