Lawrence was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, the daughter of Earlyn Lawrence, an education administrator and Head Start supervisor, and Tom Lawrence, a television news reporter for WRAL-TV in Raleigh, North Carolina. She moved from Charlotte to Raleigh in her junior year of high school and graduated from Needham B. Broughton High School. She attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and graduated with a BA in journalism in 1983.\n', '

Lawrence began her acting career on Broadway in the 1987 revival of Cabaret. In 1990, she performed in Fiddler on the Roof. She appeared in a number of television movies and series in the 1990s, like Cheers and Star Trek: Voyager. In 1993 she was cast as Assistant District Attorney Sylvia Costas in the ABC police drama series NYPD Blue created by Steven Bochco. Her consistently praised performance earned the actress three Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series nominations from 1993 to 1996, and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series in 1996. In 1996 she left the show for her own comedy series Fired Up on NBC. The series was canceled after two seasons. She later returned to NYPD Blue as a regular, and left the show in 1999, after her character was killed.\n', '

Lawrence starred with Betty White and Alfred Molina on the short-lived sitcom Ladies Man from 1999 to 2001. She played Velma Kelly in the Broadway musical Chicago in 2000. She also had a series regular role on the CBS supernatural drama Wolf Lake from 2001 to 2002. In film, she co-starred in Gossip (2000), Little Black Book (2004), and The Alibi (2006).\n', '

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