She traded sheet music for legal pads
TV actress Jill Hennessy takes the stage — as a musician
Chris Serico • The Journal News • Oct. 15, 2009 • Photo: Gentl & Hyers/Edge Reps
If you visit actress Jill Hennessy’s website, you won’t hear the echoey gavel that conjures images of her playing Assistant District Attorney Claire Kincaid on “Law & Order.”
You will hear, however, a lilting, earnest alto reminiscent of Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls, the alt-folk duo who not only appear on a poster in Hennessy’s subsequent NBC hit, “Crossing Jordan,” but also let Hennessy jam with them on tour.
“I was on cloud nine. I couldn’t believe they even asked me,” she says of playing the encore with the duo at Tarrytown Music Hall earlier this month. “I’m still riding that high at this point.”
Fans of Hennessy’s acting might be surprised to learn that she is not only a musician, but also that her singing and guitar-playing prowess were her meal ticket long before she became a prime-time TV star.
“The music and the acting have always been a part of the same entity for me,” says Hennessy, who will play the Turning Point Café in Piermont on Sunday. “They’re both storytelling. I know that sounds kind of strange, but you’re telling a story and it’s always personal. And if it’s not, make it personal.”
Hennessy, born and raised in Edmonton, Ontario, has fond childhood memories of listening to Elton John, the Carpenters and Joni Mitchell records with her father after he would return home from work. With her parents’ support, she moved out at 17 and first pursued her show-biz career as a street musician, busking in Toronto.
She landed bit parts in American TV shows and movies that were filming in Toronto, and joined her twin sister, Jacqueline, on the big screen for the 1988 Jeremy Irons thriller “Dead Ringers.”
But Hennessy’s first big break in acting came soon thereafter, when she picked up her guitar and supported a friend at a Toronto audition for a musical called “Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story.” After being cajoled into auditioning, she sang Van Morrison’s “Brown-Eyed Girl” and one of her originals. She landed a part, and joined the show in moving to New York City, where she continues to live today with her husband, Paolo Mastropietro, and two sons, Marco and Gianni.
Not long after the musical closed in the early1990s, Hennessy was called back for an iconic TV role — Dana Scully on “The X-Files.”
“I screen-tested with Gillian Anderson and, I think, two other girls,” she says.
Although Anderson scored the role, Hennessy had better luck with her next major audition, albeit with a snag; she had to leave her New York City band, the New Originals.
“I set out to audition for this show I’d never heard of, called ‘Law & Order,’ ” she recalls. “I was shocked when I got the part. After about a month on the show, I was realizing that I wasn’t able to make any band rehearsals, nor the actual performances, so I had to quit the band.”
She appeared on seasons four through seven of the series, which recently celebrated its 20th anniversary. Many members of her cast and crew were musically inclined.
“Jerry Orbach was the big music man, one of the classiest people that I’ve ever met and probably ever will meet,” she says. “He’d be singing all the time; it used to be, like, show tunes. I always had my guitar on set, and about once or twice a week, I’d meet in the squad room (set) with most of the crew and occasionally some of the guest stars. Sometimes Ben Bratt would show up, and Chris Noth would come to play, occasionally, and Dann Florek, when he was directing, and we’d just jam out on our lunch hours.”
She contributed covers to the “Crossing Jordan” soundtrack, and, in 2005, while starring in the series’ fourth season, started writing the songs that appear on her own album, “Ghost In My Head.” Guest musicians include R.E.M.’s Mike Mills, the Dixie Chicks’ Martie Maguire and pedal-steel guitarist Lloyd Maines. Hennessy’s husband sings backup on six tracks, and their older son, Marco, provides percussion for the opening of “4 Small Hands.”
Hennessy will return to the Turning Point for the first time since July 2008, when she stepped on stage with country star Jimmie Dale Gilmore and fiddler Jenny Scheinman in front of a packed crowd.
“The audience couldn’t have been more into it; they were so supportive,” Hennessy says. “They were hanging on every word, listening to everything. I have a real soft spot for that venue.”
John McAvoy, who opened the Turning Point in 1976 with his sister, Diane, said Hennessy’s natural stage presence boosts her smooth vocals.
“It’s such a kick when a musician appears to be having a really fun time,” he says. “And that’s what I remember feeling, like, ‘Wow, she’s really enjoying herself up there.’ And that type of feeling carries to the audience.”
Hennessy, playing a singer-songwriter in a movie that’s being filmed this month, says she finds fulfillment in music in a way that she doesn’t always find through acting.
“I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that you’re crafting your own material,” she says. “You’re singing your own words, your own experience. It is a very vulnerable, naked kind of feeling, but in a brilliant, amazing way.”
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An Indigo Girls fan turns opening act
Before Jill Hennessy made it big on “Law & Order” and “Crossing Jordan,” she was a street musician, trying to make enough cash to catch the Indigo Girls in concert.
“There was one night in Toronto when they were playing … and I didn’t have the money to buy a ticket, so I just put my guitar case out and started playing for a while,” she says. “I finally earned enough money, but by then they were three-quarters the way through their set. I tried to get a ticket, but it was beyond capacity and the door guy could not let me in.”
Earlier this month, about two decades after she tried to catch the show as a fan, Hennessy was one of four opening acts for the Indigo Girls at a venue in Charleston, W.Va.
At sound check, Hennessy met the Indigo Girls; Amy Ray and Emily Saliers; who invited her to perform “Closer to Fine” and “Galileo” at not only the encore in Charleston, but also one at Tarrytown Music Hall on Oct. 6. Hennessy was more than happy to oblige.
“It was one of the best times in my life,” she says.
