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Stars Who Got Their Start on Law & Order

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Jul 21, 2025 5:11 PM
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Jennifer Garner, Stars Who Got Their Start on Law & Order
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Jennifer Garner

The actress played a graduate student who has a romantic encounter with Benjamin Bratt's character in a 1996 episode.


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Adam Driver

Before his breakout role on Girls, Driver appeared on Law & Order's final 2010 season and played a lab technician accused of murdering an escort.


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Julia Roberts

In 1999, while she was dating series star Benjamin Bratt, the actress made a rare TV appearance as a party planner involved in the death of powerful businessman.


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Sebastian Stan

Nearly 20 years ago, the Pam & Tommy star played a boy abducted and raised by his abuser in 2003.


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Allison Janney

Early in her career, the Oscar winner popped up on Law & Order twice in 1992 and 1994. The first time, she played a character scared to testify about a murder. She returned two years later to portray someone interviewed about the murder of soap opera actress.


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Sam Rockwell

The Oscar winner has portrayed two different characters on seasons two and three, playing a police officer and a member of a family accused of murdering a Chinese-American student respectively.


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Emmy Rossum

Rossum's very first acting gig was on a 1997 episode playing a preteen who was the target of a female circumcision.


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Sarah Paulson

In her very first TV role, the Emmy winner played a teen who claimed that she was having an affair with her murdered mother's new husband in 1994.


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Samuel L. Jackson

The actor appeared in a 1991 episode as the lawyer for a drug dealer accused of rape. Who played the drug dealer? Read on...


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Philip Seymour Hoffman

In his first television role, the future Oscar winner played a drug dealer betrayed by another crook. Samuel L. Jackson is his lawyer.


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Claire Danes

Even before her starring role on My So-Called Life, the actress played a troubled teen in a 1992 episode that also featured future Six Feet Under star Lauren Ambrose.


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Leighton Meester

In a 1999 episode, she plays the daughter of a battered woman who helps detectives Briscoe and Curtis with a case.


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Vera Farmiga

The Up In the Air star had a part in a 1998 episode about a shooting.


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Ellen Pompeo

The Grey's Anatomy actress actually appeared on Law & Order twice, in 1996 and 2000. (Fellow Grey's stars Kate Walsh and Chandra Wilson also got work on the series.)


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Cynthia Nixon

During the show's first season, the actress played a woman who shoots two men in a subway.


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Amanda Peet

In 1995, Peet played a woman involved in a mysterious case.


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Chandra Wilson

Decades before Grey's Anatomy, Wilson played Serena Price for one 1992 episode.


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