Thousands of actors have been employed by the "Law & Order" brand, and while it's made
superstars out of lead actors Jerry Orbach, Mariska Hargitay, and Chris Meloni, plenty
of smaller actors went on to have successful careers, too.
These are the celebs you forgot made guest appearances on "Law & Order."
Adam Driver broke out as Hannah's boyfriend Adam on "Girls," but in the years leading
up to that part, he made appearances on two different "Law & Order" franchises.
First, he played Robby Vickery in a Season 20 episode of "Law & Order."
Two years later, his character Jason was suspected of an on-stage sexual assault in "Law & Order:
SVU."
"Law & Order" star Jeremy Sisto recalled during an event at the 92nd Street Y that Driver
was, in fact, the best guest star he'd worked with on the show.
Sisto said,
"He was a very strange dude [...] Sweet, but kind of just had a lot going on."
He recalled that Driver would take over the space while he acted, impressing him in a
way that made him later go back and watch Driver's work.
In behind-the-scenes footage of his "SVU" appearance, Driver said he didn't need to
do a lot of research for that character, because he himself was, quote, “inherently creepy
in life."
He clarified that he understood the character's social awkwardness, even if he was unlike
his character in other regards.
He explained,
"I didn't stalk anybody.
I thought that would be a little bit creepy for the part."
We can see what Sisto meant!
Timothée Chalamet has skyrocketed to fame as an adult, thanks in part to buzzy film
roles in "Little Women" and "Call Me By Your Name."
Fans of his work may not know that the "Dune" star has been acting since he was a child;
in particular, he got his start on television with a role on the original "Law & Order,"
playing a little kid named Eric who just wanted to play video games.
In the short scene from 2009, Chalamet's adorable character wants to play XBOX, but his nanny
tells him he can't, and that she'll make him milk and cookies instead.
When Chalamet appeared on "The Ellen Show" in 2019, he said,
"That's my first acting job ever.
'Law & Order' is like the mothership.
[...] That gives everybody their start, kind of, in acting."
Elizabeth Banks is a multi-hyphenate writer, director, actor, and producer.
Back in 2001, though, she was a virtual unknown when she starred alongside a post "Saved By
The Bell" Mark-Paul Gosselaar in an episode of "Law & Order: SVU."
She later described the episode to Jimmy Kimmel, telling him,
"I played a porn star with a sick kid whose entire life goal was to get in a gang-bang
so that I could get on the 'Howard Stern Show' to make more money and get to Vegas."
Teasing her, Kimmel asked if that episode was the last time she'd seen her father cry.
"No, I believe that my parents were very proud."
Several years after playing an adult film star on "SVU," Banks would go on to play the
titular role of Miri in Kevin Smith's "Zack and Miri Make a Porno" opposite Seth Rogen.
About that movie's controversial title, Banks told Collider,
"I think there are much bigger problems in our world today than the word 'porno.'"
She went on to say that parents should be up front with their children about things
intended for adults:
"'Hey, kid, it's not for you.'
That's it."
The year before he won the hearts of fans everywhere by looking directly into the camera
on "The Office," John Krasinski was a mostly-unknown actor taking what jobs he could find.
His pre-"Office" credits included a role on a Season 3 episode of "Law & Order: Criminal
Intent."
He was a basketball player named Jace whose teammate was killed.
It was a fitting role for Krasinski, who was a former high school basketball player.
He told the Patriot Ledger that he had planned to play at Brown University, until one day
he decided to try out for a sketch comedy group instead.
He didn't play for Brown, but he did get to put his basketball skills to good use on "The
Office."
In a classic early episode, the Dunder Mifflin office employees challenge the warehouse workers
to a game of hoops.
Krasinski was really elbowed in the face while filming, according to co-star David Denman,
the man who did the elbowing.
He told WBUR,
"That's all real blood.
I don't think John liked me the first couple of years."
Krasinski seems to at least look back on his "Law & Order" stint fondly.
When a fan on Twitter mentioned having spotted him in the role, Krasinski quote-tweeted them
and added a line from the classic franchise intro:
"These are their stories...
DUN, DUN!"
Before she fell in love with Cate Blanchett in "Carol" and gave Mark Zuckerberg a legendary
telling-off in "The Social Network," Rooney Mara appeared on a Season 7 episode of "Law
& Order: SVU" called "Fat."
Credited at the time as "Tricia Mara," she played a girl named Jessica who attacks an
overweight student.
She told Allure,
"At the end of the show you find out that I used to be obese and I hate fat people."
Mara didn't seem to be a fan of her storyline, or the show in general.
She added,
"It's ridiculous.
Who would ever do that?
[...] It was so awful.
So stupid.
People are obsessed with that show.
I don't get it."
Later, after her comments about the show went viral, Mara clarified her stance in a HuffPost
interview.
She said that her appearance on "SVU" was one of her first acting jobs, and she couldn’t
have been more excited to have been a part of it.
She added that she felt her remarks had been taken out of context.
She said,
"If anything, I didn't mean that the storyline was ridiculous; I meant that humanity is ridiculous.
I know that 'Law & Order' makes their episodes out of real things that are happening in the
city, so to me, by 'ridiculous' I meant that humanity is ridiculous.
People are awful to one another."
Years before she wowed audiences as Sydney Bristow on "Alias," Jennifer Garner was just
another actor hoping to make it in the business.
This meant taking on small roles in shows like "Law & Order."
In the Season 6 episode "Aftershock," Garner played a character named Jamie, a young woman
who has an affair with Benjamin Bratt's character, Detective Curtis.
"Aftershock" was a "tour de force" episode that broke from the procedural format of "Law
& Order."
It was the first episode to follow the characters as they dealt with the psychological aftermath
of a case, rather than its investigation.
Strangely enough, Garner would go to play the lead in another project called "Aftershock"
a few years later.
"Aftershock: Earthquake In New York" was a miniseries about an earthquake striking New
York City, a two-part TV movie that Variety called, quote, "roundly insipid."
Yikes.
Nowadays, Garner is as A-List as they come, but that doesn't mean she's forgotten her
roots.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, as film and television production came roaring back while
Broadway was still shut down, Garner proudly shared news to her Instagram Story about "Law
& Order."
The show was hiring as many out-of-work Broadway actors as they could.
Alongside the headline, she shared three simple yet effective red hearts.
When she was up for an award for her work in "The Help," Viola Davis told The Hollywood
Reporter's Oscars Actress Roundtable in 2011,
"One of my favorite roles I ever played was a serial killer."
She was talking about her role in an episode of the first season of "Law & Order: Criminal
Intent," called "Badge."
In the episode, Davis played a woman named Terry Randolph, who was an ex-cop that wound
up killing a city comptroller and his family.
Noting the racialized aspects of the story — the fact that Randolph is a Black woman
who killed a white family — Shadow and Act asked Davis if she had any regrets about taking
the role.
She told them she did not, and in fact, that she took the role explicitly because it's
rare to see a Black woman play a serial killer, and she wanted the challenge.
Davis would go on to play Defense Attorney Donna Emmett on seven episodes of "SVU" between
2003 and 2008.
Getting her bearings as a TV lawyer, she would years later step into what would become her
most famous role, Annalise Keating on "How to Get Away With Murder."
The actor said at The Hollywood Reporter roundtable:
"I appreciated killing a whole family with a baseball bat.
You know, sometimes one person's junk is another person's treasure."
Before she joined Ryan Murphy's stable of actors, Sarah Paulson got her start as a teenager
on "Law & Order."
In the Season 5 episode "Family Values," Paulson played Maggie, a young girl who was being
abused by her mother's new husband.
Looking back, Paulson credits her audition for "Law & Order" as the reason why she has
a career today.
She told Collider,
"It's the right pair of eyes watching you, to determine whether you have a successful
career or not."
She described a producer taking a liking to her in the audition room, allowing her to
try again.
She said,
"In this episode I was gonna have to cry a lot.
[...] There is something you can find for a connectivity for the rest of my working
life thus far."
It’s no secret that her frequent crying on "American Horror Story" has become a meme.
She went on to tell Collider that she was unable to cry during the audition for “Law
& Order.”
However, a producer took one extra moment to encourage her to really feel her humiliation
at having failed so far.
He let her try it again; she cried and got the part, and it made her career.
[Crying]
Before she played Lorelai Gilmore on "Gilmore Girls," Lauren Graham starred in a three-episode
arc on the original "Law & Order" in Season 7.
The three-part story centered on Lenny Briscoe and Reynaldo Curtis traveling to Los Angeles
to investigate the case of a murdered Hollywood producer.
Graham played Lisa Lundquist, the Vice President of Production who shows the detectives around
the backlot.
The episodes also starred Scott Cohen, who would later recur as Lorelai's love interest-slash-fiancé
and Rory's teacher, Max Medina, on three seasons of "Gilmore Girls."
Cohen told co-star Scott Patterson on his podcast "I Am All In" that he initially wasn't
planning to take that part.
He shared,
"I actually said no, for a long time [...] and then I saw Lauren at some kind of publicity
thing [...] and she was just so fantastic and fun.
And I was like, 'You know what, I think this could be really fun to do.'"
For her part, Graham told Republic World that she wanted to stick to comedies, and that
she doesn't mind if a bit of Lorelai Gilmore shows up in her other roles.
She said,
"If I was trying to get away from [Lorelai] entirely, I feel that [I] could never do anything
comedic again.
I would [...] have to only do 'Law & Order' type of stuff.
That's just not me, not who I am."
Many actors look back on their time with the "Law & Order" family fondly, but Laverne Cox
says she has an extra reason to be grateful for her guest-starring role on "SVU."
She told Entertainment Tonight that her Season 9 episode, "Closet," marked the role that
got her a Screen Actors Guild card.
She added,
"'SVU' was my first big job.
It was the job that made me — I had to join SAG to actually do the job after I booked
it.
So, that meant a lot to me."
Furthermore, after actors make an appearance on a show in syndication, they get paid residuals
whenever the episode is shown again on television.
The extra money was extra-important to Cox at that point in her life.
She said,
"I actually got paid double because it was a holiday, and that episode re-aired so many
times that it financed a major part of my transition.
Thank you, 'Law & Order!'"
Also in 2008, Cox appeared on an episode of the original "Law & Order," called "Sweetie."
The cast was star-studded, both with already-famous celebs and people at the start of their careers.
Cox acted alongside guest stars Vivica A. Fox, Colman Domingo, and Billy Magnussen.
Check out one of our newest videos right here!
Plus, even more Nicki Swift videos about your favorite celebrities are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.