10 THINGS YOU DON'T KNOW ABOUT LUCY LAWLESS
KNOCKOUT Lucy Lawless is best known as the sword-swinging leading lady in Xena: Warrior Princess. But the 54-year-old actress and singer hasn’t slowed down since the syndicated TV series ended in 2001. She’s racked up notable credits in shows including Battlestar Galactica, Salem and Spartacus: Blood and Sand. This summer, the New Zealand native is voicing the habit-wearing villain Nunchuk in the animated flick Minions: The Rise of Gru. Here are ten things you don’t know about Lucy.
1 She overcame a childhood bout with the eating disorder bulimia.
2 Lucy wanted to be an opera singer until she was 16.
3 She won the 1989 Mrs. New Zealand competition at age 21, a year after marrying first husband Garth Lawless — who she’d divorce in 1995.
4 In 1991, she studied drama under William B. Davis, who played the Cigarette
Smoking Man in
The X-Files.
5 She dyed her dark blond hair to play brunette Xena.
6 The actress suffered multiple pelvic fractures in 1996 after falling from a horse while taping a skit for
The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
7 In addition to English, she speaks German, French and some Italian.
8 After singing the national anthem before an NHL game in 1997, she waved to the crowd and accidentally revealed her boobs. “Obviously, I was mortified,” she recalls.
“It was quite a bit more exposure than I want.”
9 She first appeared on Broadway in the 1997 revival of Grease but later griped producers typecast her as bad girl Rizzo — instead of Goody Two-shoes Sandy — because of her Xena past.
10 Director Peter Jackson asked her to audition for the role of elf queen Galadriel in 2001’s The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. But she backed out after becoming pregnant with the first of her two sons with second husband Robert Tapert, co-creator of Xena.