She is best known for her role as the title character in the television series Xena: Warrior Princess , but also portrayed the News Reporter D'Anna Biers on the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica series and Lucretia in the television series Spartacus: Blood and Sand and associated series.
She has described her family as "this big, sprawling Irish Catholic family", [2] and while filming in Ireland for the Discovery Channel in , told Ireland on Sunday that her father's family originated in Quilty, County Clare. Ryan appeared in her first musical at age 10 [4] and began acting in secondary school.
Lawless has said she suffered from bulimia as a child, but she was able to overcome the illness. In that episode , she played a man-hating Amazon named Lysia. She went on to play another character, Lyla, in the first-season episode "As Darkness Falls. Lawless received her best-known role when she was asked to play a heroic warrior woman named Xena in the first season of Hercules. Stewart, one of Pacific Renaissance Pictures's in-house writers, dramatised the teleplay from a story that Robert G.
The character proved to be a fan favourite. Vanessa Angel was originally cast in the role, but she fell ill and was unable to travel to New Zealand for shooting.
To differentiate between Xena and the similar Lysia, Lawless' hair, previously an ash blonde, was dyed black. She also wore a much darker costume. Lawless returned as Xena in two more episodes of the first season of Hercules, which portrayed her turn from villainess to a good, heroic character.
