Privacy Policy » 15 Famous Actors Whose Careers Started On Law & Order

There was a time not so long ago when a guest spot on “Law & Order” was a rite of passage for any up-and-coming actor. You could hardly find an actor in the greater New York metropolitan area who didn’t have a credit on the popular procedural to their name. Honestly, it makes sense why it would serve as such a great launching pad: Each episode required an entirely new cast of supporting players, often of all ages and backgrounds, creating lots of opportunities for aspiring actors to get some screen time. 

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While “Law & Order” often had costar roles available, who were basically the leads for that given week, often getting the meatiest material, there were also plenty of “under-five” parts (as in, roles that had five or fewer lines of dialogue) for newbies to cut their teeth on. Like the guy who gets questioned while unloading boxes down at the pier, that kind of thing. So obviously, over the course of the many years that “Law & Order” and its many spinoffs have been on the air, it only makes sense that some of their guest stars would end up making it big in the industry. Here are some of the most famous actors who got their start on “Law & Order.”

Chris Messina didn’t exactly get a lot of screen time in his debut on “Law & Order.” In the season 6 episode “Rebels,” Messina plays Tom Bell, a wealthy college student whose visit to a biker bar ends with him getting a fatal gut wound. He dies in his very first scene, and the rest of the episode is spent figuring out what led to his tragic demise. Interestingly enough, it was not his last time on “Law & Order,” With so many one-off appearances, the show has a tendency to recycle actors, so he had a role later in the very same season, playing a totally different character 20 episodes later, and was seen again in season 13.

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Years later, Messina got major attention as Mindy Kaling’s coworker/rival/best love interest on “The Mindy Project,” but he’s also had some strong outings on the big screen, particularly as Ewan McGregor’s sidekick in the Margot Robbie-led “Birds of Prey” and an energetic, profane sports agent in Ben Affleck’s “Air.” He’s currently starring in the true crime comedy “Based on a True Story” alongside Kaley Cuoco.

When Sarah Paulson was 19 years old, she made her on-screen debut in the season 5 episode of “Law & Order,” “Family Values.” In it, she plays Maggie, the teenage daughter of that episode’s murder victim. When her stepfather becomes the prime suspect, she provides an alibi for him, claiming that the two had been having a secret affair. Her stepfather denies this, dismissing it as a relationship she built up in her mind. But is she making it up, or is he is just a master gaslighter in addition to being a grown adult comfortable sleeping with a minor? (Double yuck.)

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In the years since, she’s become an icon on the small screen, especially in her many varied roles in the “American Crime Story” and “American Horror Story” anthology series. Between the two, she received seven Emmy nominations, winning for her performance as Marcia Clark amidst the O.J. Simpson trial in “American Crime Story.

The year after making his on-screen debut on the TV show “Another World” in 1999, Paul Wesley (then still credited as Paul Wasilewski) had a supporting role on a second season episode of “Law & Order: SVU.” The team is investigating the murder of Andrew Croft, and all signs point to the perpetrator being his adopted son Michael, although Michael claims it was an accident. Wesley plays Danny, a former friend of Michael’s who was once propositioned by Andrew but cut off the friendship after Michael witnessed the encounter and didn’t do anything about it. Eventually, it becomes clear that Michael was being sexually abused by his adopted father, leading to Andrew’s violent murder.

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Although Paul Wesley has had a smattering of film and television roles, he’s most famous for his performance as Stefan Salvatore on The CW’s hit vampire drama “The Vampire Diaries.” But in 2022, he took on another iconic character, playing a young James T. Kirk in “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.”

In his second ever on-screen appearance, Michael Pitt played Andy in the season 8 episode of “Law & Order,” “Carrier.” He’s featured in the first scene of the episode as a high school student who wakes up the morning after a wild party to discover that things have taken a tragic turn. The teen host — and his close friend — was shot and killed in her bedroom at some point during the party.

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Michael Pitt had a starring role on HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire,” where he played Jimmy Darmody, a bright but deeply troubled World War I vet returning home to Atlantic City who ends up getting mixed up in crime boss Nucky Thompson’s extralegal exploits. He also appeared opposite a young Ryan Gosling in “Murder By Numbers,” a film with a murder plot lifted from Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rope” about two sociopathic youths obsessed with the idea of committing the perfect crime as an intellectual exercise. His most recent film performance was in the crime thriller “Reptile” alongside Benicio Del Toro, Alicia Silverstone, and Justin Timberlake.

Ellen Pompeo has always had a home in the world of television, right from her very first acting role on “Law & Order.” In 1996, she appeared in the season 6 episode “Savior,” playing the role of Jenna Weber, the lone survivor of a suspected family annihilator (the term for a person who murders their entire family, usually followed by themselves, although that isn’t the case in this episode). After her mother and brother were killed, she is interviewed by investigators who have her father pegged as the most likely suspect, since he was drunk on the night of their murders and claims to have no memory of what happened. But as is often the case on “Law & Order,” things may not be as they initially seem.

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Nowadays, Pompeo is best known for her starring role as Meredith Grey on the medical megahit “Grey’s Anatomy,” which was a ratings juggernaut in its early years and is still chugging along in its 21st season. In 2025, she also starred in “Good American Family,” a miniseries thriller for Hulu.

All the way back in 1995, a fresh-faced Peter Sarsgaard made his first on-screen appearance on “Law & Order” in an episode about a college coed who is murdered. He plays Josh, the boyfriend of the victim — and although the boyfriend is generally a pretty obvious suspect in a case like this, there’s more than meets the eye here, especially when it comes to the relationship between the victim and her roommate Megan.

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From there, his acting career blossomed, and he’s still workingg today. In 2024, Peter Sarsgaard costarred on the Apple TV+ legal thriller “Presumed Innocent,” where he played a lawyer in the district attorney’s office who professionally and personally butts heads with Jake Gyllenhaal’s Rusty Sabich, who is accused of murdering their colleague. That same year, he was featured in the film “September 5,” which revolves around the sports news team at the 1972 Munich Olympics who are suddenly thrown into the deep end when they’re the only ones in position to report on a devastating hostage crisis.

Before Leighton Meester set the New York social scene ablaze in “Gossip Girl,” she saw a very different side of the city in “Law & Order.” Her first on-screen credit was the 1999 episode “Disciple,” which she was cast in when she was just 13 years old. When an unidentified teen girl turns up in a hospital waiting room dead, the investigative team works to figure out her identity. One of their potential leads is a girl named Alyssa Turner, who was flagged as being missing from school — but it turns out that she’d been absent due to turmoil in her personal life, as she and her mother moved into a shelter for domestic violence victims. Still, she provides the police with a positive ID of the girl in the photo as one of her classmates.

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In the years since playing Blair Waldorf on “Gossip Girl,” Meester has continued to work in both film and television, with a starring role on the Netflix comedy “Single Parents” and recurring appearances on shows like “The Orville,” “How I Met Your Father,” and “Good Cop/Bad Cop.” She’s also one half of the ultimate 2000s teen drama power couple, married to “The O.C.” star Adam Brody.

Emmy Rossum was only 11 years old when she made her debut with an appearance in “Ritual,” a season 8 episode of “Law & Order.” In it, she played Alison Martin, a young girl whose father killed her great-uncle because he was making arrangements to have her undergo a female circumcision — an extremely controversial cultural practice common primarily in parts of Africa, which many regard as a mutilation born out of misogyny. Light and uplifting subject matter, eh?

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She followed this up with a supporting role in the Disney Channel Original Movie “Genius” when she was still just a kid, and at age 17, she got the role of a lifetime when she was cast as Christine Daae in the big-budget adaptation of “The Phantom of the Opera.” Rossum headed back to the small screen as an adult, starring as Fiona Gallagher on the Showtime drama “Shameless.” As the oldest sibling in a dysfunctional family with a shiftless drunk (William H. Macy) for a father, Fiona finds herself living up to the eldest daughter stereotype and taking care of … well, everyone except herself, until she finally left in season 9.

It’s kind of tough to imagine Mac from the long-running comedy series “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” looking serious, but Rob McElhenney’s first acting role was as far from the comedic antics he’s now known for as you can possibly imagine. He was 20 — not even old enough to drink in Paddy’s Pub, unless it’s the episode where they illegally serve a bunch of high school kids — when he appeared in a 1997 episode of “Law & Order.”

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In the season 8 opener, McElhenney played Joey Timon, one of a pair of Catholic schoolboys who were brought in on murder charges after killing a restaurant delivery man pretty much just for the fun of it. The two pass blame between them like it’s a game of hot potato, each claiming the other was the one who pulled the trigger. Although Timon confesses to the crime, he does so to a priest — meaning it’s not admissible in court. 

Julianna Margulies is basically television royalty, so it’s only fitting that she got her start on one of the most popular and longest-running television series in history, “Law & Order.” On the season 3 episode “Conduct Unbecoming,” she played Lieutenant Ruth Mendoza, the roommate of the young Navy officer who was found dead at the beginning of the show. Although she’s not considered a suspect in the mysterious death, she is brought in for questioning so the team can get a better sense of who might be responsible, and she reveals information that incriminates their commanding officer.

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After making a splash on “Law & Order,” she hopped from TV hit to TV hit. She had a leading role as charge nurse Carol Hathaway on the hit medical drama “ER,” a show that kept her busy through most of the 1990s. After that, she starred in “The Good Wife,” a legal drama that ran for seven seasons. The two shows earned dozens of Emmy nominations and a handful of wins, while Margulies herself was nominated 10 times and won three times (once for “ER,” and twice for “The Good Wife.”)

When Peter Facinelli appeared as a guest star in “Performance,” a season 5 episode of “Law & Order,” he was tasked with bringing to life a pretty unsavory character. He played Shane, a student at a prestigious private school who is brought in on rape charges while the team are investigating a supposed snuff film. Although the girl in the video turns up alive, she tells the team that Shane raped her after she refused to have sex with him on camera. And what’s worse, it was all part of a competition between him and his friends to see who could sleep with the most girls — whether they consented or not.

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In the years since, he’s played more than a few jerks, but none as horrifying as his first ever role. He got his big break in the teen comedy “Can’t Hardly Wait” as a popular high school quarterback who breaks up with his girlfriend (Jennifer Love Hewitt) so that he can play the field in college, only to almost immediately regret his decision. More recently, he tried a pair of fangs on for size as the patriarch of the vampiric Cullen family in the “Twilight” film franchise.

Although Rooney Mara is most familiar to audiences for her work on the big screen, she got her start with a meaty role on “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.” In 2006, she had a lead role in the episode “Fat,” where she played Jessica DeLay, a teenager who was found to have been brutally beaten and sexually assaulted. But as the investigation goes on, they begin to suspect that there might be more at play here, as Jessica’s violent, bullying behavior comes to light.

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She’s come a long way from her guest-starring procedural roots, with acclaimed appearances in a number of beloved and interesting films, including the chillingly relevant “The Social Network,” “Carol,” Women Talking,” and “Nightmare Alley.” Mara has two Academy Award nominations to her name — one for “Carol” and one for “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” — making her one half of a very critically acclaimed power couple, alongside her partner Joaquin Phoenix.

Unlike many of the other actors on this list who got their start on “Law & Order” at surprisingly young ages, Ty Burrell was a comparatively late bloomer, making his on-screen acting debut at 33. But hey, some things are just worth waiting for. In the 2000 episode “Turnstile Justice,” he plays Paul Donatelli, the ex-husband of a woman who was killed in a subway station by a mentally ill individual who was denied medication in prison and thus suffered a relapse. With the mystery of the murder solved fairly quickly, the episode unexpectedly pivots to an investigation into the medical neglect that saw this man prevented from receiving essential medication as part of a cost-saving measure.

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These days, Burrell is best known for playing Phil Dunphy on the comedy classic “Modern Family,” and there’s an argument to be made that in it he’s one of the best dads in television history — it certainly earned him plenty of acclaim, with eight Emmy nominations culminating in two wins. But he’s also appeared in a number of feature films, including “Dawn of the Dead,” “The Incredible Hulk,” “Muppets Most Wanted,” and “Finding Dory.”

After beginning her career as a teen star, Danes has made the world her oyster in both film and television. She and Jared Leto became veritable ’90s icons on the incredibly influential but short-lived teen drama “My So-Called Life,” followed by a starring role in the 1996 Baz Luhrmann film “Romeo + Juliet” alongside Leonardo DiCaprio. She starred on the long-running political thriller series “Homeland,” which aired on Showtime for an impressive eight seasons, a role which earned her seven Emmy nominations and two wins in 2012 and 2013.

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But before all that, she made her on-screen debut with an appearance in the third season opener of “Law & Order.” Danes played Tracy Brandt, the daughter of a woman suspected of murdering a photographer/part-time pimp. But as the episode goes on, the investigators begin to wonder if Tracy isn’t being entirely honest, and perhaps was even responsible for the murder herself.

Philip Seymour Hoffman may have been one of the greatest actors of his generation, but he still got his start on a network procedural just like almost every other actor in New York. Back in 1991, during the very first season of “Law & Order,” he nabbed a guest-starring role in “The Violence of Summer” as his on-screen debut. In it, he plays Steven Hanauer, one of four men accused of gang-raping a television reporter. Although the investigators are initially dismissive of the victim, focusing in on the holes in her story, highlighting the complexities of these cases and the inherent hypocrisies often held by those who are supposed to get justice for the vulnerable. (And of course, the importance of believing women.) It’s a star-studded affair, as Hanauer’s lawyer is played by none other than Samuel L. Jackson.

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After his stint on “Law & Order,” Hoffman’s career quickly took off. He had key roles in acclaimed films like “Boogie Nights,” “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” “The Big Lebowski,” “Almost Famous,” and “Capote,” the latter of which earned him an Academy Award for Best Actor. He went on to receive additional nominations for his work in “Charlie Wilson’s War,” “Doubt,” and “The Master.” Sadly, he passed away in 2014 at the age of 46 from an accidental drug overdose, prematurely ending a triumphant Hollywood career.

If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN’s National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).

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If you or someone you know is dealing with domestic abuse, you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233. You can also find more information, resources, and support at their website.

If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA’s National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).