Jillian Noel Hennessy (born November 25, 1968) is a Canadian actress and singer. She is most known for her roles on the American television series Law & Order, on which she played prosecutor Claire Kincaid for three seasons, and Crossing Jordan, on which she played the lead character, Jordan Cavanaugh, for six seasons. She has also acted in films such as RoboCop 3 and Most Wanted, and the independent films Chutney Popcorn and The Acting Class, the latter of which she also wrote and co-directed.
Hennessy was born in Edmonton, Alberta. Her father, John Hennessy, was a meat salesman and sales/marketing executive, a job that required considerable travel and resulted in frequent moves for the family. Her mother, Maxine, a secretary, left the family in 1982, leaving her daughter to be partially raised by her paternal grandmother, Eleanor, in Kitchener, Ontario. She has a younger brother, John Paul "J.P." Hennessy, Jr., and an identical twin sister, Jacqueline, who is a magazine writer and TV show host in Canada. Hennessy has Irish, French, Swedish and Italian ancestry on her father's side, and mostly Ukrainian Roma, as well as Austrian, ancestry on her mother's. She attended Stanley Park Senior Public School and graduated from Grand River Collegiate Institute, both in Kitchener, Ontario, and used to busk in the Toronto subway.
Hennessy and her sister made their acting debut playing twin call girls in 1988's Dead Ringers. She was short listed for the role of Dana Scully on The X-Files according to Gillian Anderson, the actress who eventually got the role.

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