Sharon Lawrence

Sharon Lawrence is an American actress born on June 29, 1961, in Charlotte, North Carolina. She attended Needham B. Broughton High School in Raleigh, where she relocated during her junior year, and went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1983.

Lawrence began her professional acting career on Broadway, where she performed between 1985 and 1996. Her stage credits include the 1987 revival of Cabaret, a 1990 production of Fiddler on the Roof, and appearances in Zorba and Chicago. She later returned to the Broadway production of Chicago in 2000, taking on the role of Velma Kelly.

Her television breakthrough came in 1993, when she was cast as Assistant District Attorney Sylvia Costas in the ABC police drama NYPD Blue, created by Steven Bochco. The role earned her three Primetime Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series, a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series in 1996, and a Satellite Award nomination for Best Actress in a Television Series Drama. Lawrence departed the series in 1996 to headline the NBC sitcom Fired Up, which ran for two seasons before cancellation. She subsequently returned to NYPD Blue as a series regular until her character's death ended her run in 1999.

Following her time on NYPD Blue, Lawrence co-starred with Betty White and Alfred Molina in the sitcom Ladies Man, which ran from 1999 to 2001. She then took a series regular role in the CBS supernatural drama Wolf Lake in 2001. Among her film credits are Gossip in 2000, Middle of Nowhere in 2012, and Solace in 2015. In 2007, she appeared in the CW teen drama Hidden Palms, playing the character Tess Wiatt.

Lawrence accumulated a substantial number of recurring television roles across the following decade. She played Maisy Gibbons in the first season of Desperate Housewives, portrayed the birth mother of Dr. Maura Isles in the TNT series Rizzoli and Isles, and appeared as a lead character's mother in the Lifetime comedy-drama Drop Dead Diva from 2009 to 2013. In 2009, she received an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series for her portrayal of Izzie Stevens' mother on Grey's Anatomy. She also held a recurring role as Sylvia Baker on One Tree Hill beginning in October 2010, and appeared in Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, Boston Legal, The Mentalist, and Body of Proof, among other series.

From 2016 to 2019, Lawrence played real estate mogul Margo Mierzejewski in the Showtime comedy-drama Shameless. In 2017, she co-starred opposite Sam Elliott in the second season of the Netflix comedy The Ranch and appeared in a recurring capacity in the Oprah Winfrey Network drama Queen Sugar. That same year she starred in the CBS comedy Me, Myself and I, which was pulled from the network's schedule after six episodes. She later joined the cast of the CW soap opera Dynasty as Laura Van Kirk in 2018 and appeared as Louise Garbeau in the Showtime series On Becoming a God in Central Florida in 2019. In 2021, she had recurring roles in Punky Brewster and Rebel before starring in the Paramount+ neo-Western series Joe Pickett.

In her personal life, Lawrence married Tom Apostle in 2002 in a ceremony held at Saint Sophia Greek Orthodox Church in Los Angeles, the same church in which her NYPD Blue character, Sylvia Costas, married Detective Andy Sipowicz.